


know the feeling

by sammyatstanford



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Angst, Consent Issues, References to Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-04-30 22:47:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 37,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5182505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sammyatstanford/pseuds/sammyatstanford
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's brother has been missing for four years, but Dean has never stopped looking. Not even when he wonders if Sam might not want to be found.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. alone in this

It’s surprisingly easy to view a John Doe. You’d never guess, given all the red tape and paperwork that usually surrounds the victim of a potential crime, but make a body unidentified, and suddenly you barely need a plausible story, much less a fake ID, to get through the door. The smaller cities and towns especially, populations unused to some of the ugly ways John Does go, more than eager for someone to come in and resolve part of the mess.

It doesn’t matter how many times Dean does this. It never gets any easier.

He’s got a system now, gives himself one Zepplin track (and not a long one either) to sit in the car and stoically not panic while he stares at the door of the county morgue, before he yanks out the keys and forces himself to move, the familiar groancreakthud of the car’s door echoing in the hollow space enclosed by his ribs, the space that won’t fill properly with air until he gets this whole thing over with yet again.

He slips Dad’s leather jacket over his shoulders, twitches it into place and lets the well-known weight of it settle into muscle and sinew and bone. It’s comforting, in its own way, another one of the layers he builds up on himself so he can pretend that none of this affects him.

 _It’s not him_ , he thinks firmly.  _It’s not him_ , repeated loud and clear and distinct in his own head before he shakes all the pieces of himself into place and climbs the steps to the glass door.

‘John Doe,’ the report had read. ‘Brunette. Height: approx. 73 inches. Weight: approx. 145 lbs.’

Dean wants to say it takes more matching details than that to justify an eighteen-hour car trip, but he’d be lying. He’s gone further on that little, probably would for less if his gut told him to do it. He might almost prefer it that way, the chances that he’ll find what he isn’t looking for narrowed down to something calculable but slim. After all, the more details that fit, the higher the chances.

This time, there were a lot of details.

Dean’s heart is bouncing against his breastbone as he holds the door open for an older woman coming through it, mascara on her cheeks that she’s just smearing around with a tissue, too distracted to even acknowledge him. The smile on his face is so pasted on it’s probably sticky, but the receptionist has seen worse than his fake cheerfulness, he’s sure of it.

“I’m here to see the John Doe. I called yesterday?”

“Oh, I remember,” the woman nods. She’s got pretty red-brown hair hanging past her shoulders. It looks soft and real even in the fluorescent light sheen. The nameplate on the counter reads ‘Allison Berkowitz.’ “Dean Carpenter, right?”

“That’s me,” Dean agrees, tugging his wallet out of his back pocket and passing across the Texas state ID with the correct name on it. Allison gives it a cursory glance before handing it back.

“You’re a bit earlier than we were expecting,” she says apologetically. “Let me just call back to make sure everything’s ready. If you could take a seat?” She gestures to a bank of chairs upholstered in faded maroon with one chipped-polish hand and picks up the phone with the other.

Dean sits, tries to keep himself from fidgeting restlessly in the chair, but settles for thumping out the bass line to “Free Will” on his thigh. Fortunately, he hasn’t even made it through the solo when Allison gets his attention. His blood pressure has got to be around 600 or so now, and it’s a fucking long song.

“Dean?” He looks up, catches her eye. “You can head through that door, someone will meet you on the other side.” The red flutter of her fingernails points the way.

“Thanks, Allison,” he says, takes a deep breath and climbs to his feet.

The person on the other side of the door has a short grey coat and a nametag that says ‘Jim Perkins.’ Jim talks as he leads Dean down a hall, oblivious to the fact that every step feels like Dean’s dragging his legs through a foot of wet concrete, that the banging of his heart is so loud it’s the only sound in Dean’s ears. There’s no calming at this point, just the agonizing wait as Jim knocks lightly on a door, as the light comes on behind green curtains, as Dean forgets how to breathe completely when the fabric is drawn away to reveal the metal table behind it.

His eyes catch first, involuntarily, on the ring of bruising around John Doe’s throat. It was in the report, ‘COD: asphyxiation via strangulation,’ but seeing it here is something different, purplebrown and utterly shocking on such pale skin, and he has to force himself not to get caught in the horror of it, has to dig his fingertips hard into the glass as he drags his gaze up to John Doe’s face.

For a terrible moment, the world stops spinning, time stops moving. Dean stops living.

A hand on his shoulder startles him so badly he almost attacks, manages to catch himself halfway into the motion of grabbing his assailant and tossing them to the ground.

“Mr. Carpenter,” Jim Perkins is saying. “Mr. Carpenter, is this your brother?”

This time, like every other time, Dean swears his voice doesn’t break with relief.

“No.”

***

Dean’s night goes like this: one beer, two whiskeys, one beer, three whiskeys, whiskey, whiskey, whiskey. There might have been more whiskey. At this point, the only thing he’s sure of is that he’s not remotely sure.

He doesn’t usually drink this much, not anymore. There were times, six months after Sam disappeared when Dean really started to lose hope, and then again after Dad, times that all Dean did was drink, but he recognizes that it makes him sloppy, confused, that it tanks his ability to think. So he keeps it simple most of the time, drinks just enough to get to sleep every night.

But tonight, he’s celebrating. Or drowning his sorrows. When he’s this drunk, he can admit that maybe it’s both.

The thing Dean wants more than anything else in the world is for Sam to be alive.

The thing Dean wants more than anything other than that, is just to  _know_. To have an answer, finally, after more than four years of searching. Resolution, no matter what it is.

He spends a decent amount of time browsing missing persons forums—it’s where he picks up around half his tips about John Does, and he’s even made a few friends, if he can call them that, people that he’s trusted with Sam’s description and the sort of personal details that might make him stand out to someone who had never met him before—and so he knows that the way he feels is standard for the kind of people who have hung on to tiny shreds of baseless hope for endless years. But knowing doesn’t make him feel any less guilty for even occasionally thinking that even if what he found was Sam’s corpse, he’d at least have found him.

 _He’s alive_ , Dean promises himself, and it means somehow more and less when it’s this whiskey-drenched.  _He’s somewhere and alive. I’d know if he were dead, I’d know it_.

He asks for water the next time the bartender passes him by, orders a basket of the hottest wings a middle-of-nowhere joint like this has to offer, which have nothing on some of the shit he’s eaten traveling around the country. Sam never seemed to get it, why Dean liked to punish himself just to eat something that was bad for him to begin with, but Sam was always weird about that sort of thing.

He’s sobered up enough by the time he puts a fistful of bills on the bar to pay his tab that he barely stumbles shuffling out the roadhouse’s door. He’d been smart earlier, left the Impala at the motel and walked the mile or so to the bar so that he’d have no choice but to walk back now when he really, really doesn’t want to. But there’s a kind of momentum to being drunk off your ass, and so he just keeps moving.

That kid today.  _Fuck_. Now that it’s all over, Dean can admit to himself that this was the first one in a long time that had him scared, genuinely  _scared_. The description of the vic had been close enough to make Dean’s stomach bottom out when he got his hands on the full ME’s report.

Sam had been five foot, nine inches the last time Dean had measured him, one restless Saturday when Dean realized that he wasn’t seeing just the top of Sam’s head anymore, he was looking dead-on to his hairline. That had been almost three months before Sam’s disappearance, so realistically he could have been even taller by then.

And he’d been thin. Not waifish or sickly, but so lean under Dean’s hands, the bone bumps of his hips and elbows and collarbones like mountain ranges under the drag of Dean’s thumbs. Not underweight, because the layer of muscle he kept up under all those miles of stretched soft skin was denser than his puppy fat had been. Dean never really had the words to describe his little brother, lacked the language for the handsome, irresistible thing he had become. Sam was the smart one, the eloquent one, the one who could stretch his neck across the pillow and murmur things into Dean’s ear that made Dean flush hot and cold all at once.

Sam was something else entirely.

But there’s four years of unknown change between that Sam and today (four years one month eight days, not that Dean’s counting), so Dean has to keep his options pretty broad. Sam now could have short hair, bleach blonde and brush cut. He could have dreads and a beer belly. He could be five foot eleven or six foot seven. The average height for a man in the US is five foot ten, and no matter how much it seemed like Sam would never stop growing, there were a lot of unidentified bodies that could fit the world of possible Sam characteristics. His fucking eyes couldn’t even stay one color back when Dean saw them every day.

Still, sometimes Dean gets a feeling. The words of an ME are colorless on the page but there are times they come to life in Dean’s mind, when the kid on the paper and the Sam that occupies Dean’s thoughts collide so many places, it’s like a hand reaches through Dean’s stomach and twists up his large intestine. The kid today had been one of those – tall, shaggy brown hair, almond-shaped eyes that were something like gold under a penlight, thin for his size, olive-skinned.

Dean had been sleep-deprived even before he saw the report, but once he’d gotten on the phone and weaseled more information out of someone important enough to give it, he’d been in the car with his heart thumping in his palms, had barely relaxed into the road lull over the many-hour trip.

And  _god_ , the bruising on the vic’s throat. He’s seen worse, knows he has, has seen corpses mangled under banshee claws and ribs cracked and butterflied wide by the jaws of a black dog, but he’d never looked at those people and thought of his baby brother. Not the way he had today, looking at that ring of stark discoloration, the crushed esophagus underneath it, looking at it and seeing Sam there, struggling with a stranger’s hands around his neck, prying helplessly at an iron grip squeezing and _squeezing_  until every last spark of light went out of Sam’s eyes, and Dean stumbles down to his knees on the cracked asphalt and pukes up everything in his stomach on the side of rural route 56.

Fuck if those wings don’t burn way more coming back up.

He climbs shakily back to his feet, wipes the vomit off his chin, keeps shuffling down the highway until he makes it back to the motel, sticks his head under the faucet and tries to soothe the burn of stomach acid and wing sauce by guzzling cool water from the tap. He’s whiskey-tired but he’s also disgusting, knows he needs to shower to get the puke off his face and neck and the back of his arm. He steps out into the room long enough to flip on the TV. Now that he’s alone all the time, he finds the background noise keeps him less on edge.

The shower is barely above lukewarm, but it’s functional, and he cleans himself off as thoroughly as he can manage when his hands are still shaking with the aftereffects of his little episode outside. He uses motel soap but always brings his own shampoo, the same kind Sam used to like. It’s blue and so coconutty it smells like sunscreen, and Dean breathes in the fake tropical scent and reminds himself that Sam is out there. That Sam wasn’t on that metal slab, and Sam is somewhere for him to find. That no matter what happened, no matter what has kept his brother from contacting him in all this time, Dean will find him.

Dean will save him.

He comes back out into the room proper wrapped in one of the scratchiest towels he’s been forced to use in a while, gets his duffle on the bed to dig out some worn-thin t-shirt and a pair of boxers to sleep in, slips into the clothes and throws the towel into a heap on the floor. Different motel, different day, same routine.

The news is running at low volume, but loud enough that he can tell the current story is about some gas station hold-up in nowhere Montana, where a patron had heroically knocked down the gunman and the whole thing had been caught on security tape.

The old green cooler still has ice at the bottom when he opens it and pulls out a beer. Never too early for hair of the dog, never too late to help himself sleep, so he pops the tab one-handed, raises cold aluminum to his lips.

The beer hits the floor, glugging noisily out of the can and fizzing as it settles into the carpet fibers, but Dean doesn’t notice. Doesn’t notice because he’s on knees rugburned from the way he stumbles numbly forward and collapses in front of the television set. Doesn’t notice because his hands are gripping the plastic frame so tightly it squeals.

Doesn’t notice because the news has freeze-framed on a black-and-white image of the assailant with his gun drawn, of the brave patron about to attack him unseen from behind. The face is turned mostly away from the camera, and the image is so low resolution that it’s visibly grainy, but none of that matters. None of that matters because Dean  _knows._ Unquestionably, unshakably, Dean knows that the heroic bystander is his little brother.

_Sam is alive._


	2. been losing plenty

One of the things Dean loves so much about his car is the way her vibrations rattle all the way down into his bones. Newer cars are designed to be slick, to make you feel like you’re floating along in a climate-controlled glass box, detached from the road and from the world. But the Impala feels real, reminds Dean that he’s alive even in the interminable miles of empty farmland that make Middle America so easy to get lost in. It’s good for grounding him, keeping him here, in the present and humming along to whatever tape is jammed into the deck.

Right now, unfortunately, it’s not doing the trick. Dean’s mind has been on one track since he recognized his brother in that gas station security footage, but that track is perilous, winding, dividing down into a lot of twisting, dangerous smaller paths that mire Dean’s mind and make his heart sink way down into the dark leather that’s cradling him.

Because Dean’s on his way to find a brother he hasn’t seen since before he could legally drink. The brother that may not actually want to see him after all this time.

Early on after Sam’s disappearance, Dean had these vivid dreams about their reunion. The way he’d wrap his arms around Sam and breathe in Sam’s shampoo and boysweat smell and clutch on so tightly that his fingers fused with Sam’s ribs and they could never, ever be separated again. The way Sam would cling just as tightly back, pull away just slightly so he could take in Dean’s face, those dimples dug in deep because he’d be smiling so wide.

Realistically, he was pretty sure this was not how the experience would actually go down. His more practical, daytime fantasizing involved more blood and bullets and things like heroically saving Sam from some grizzly supernatural fate just in the nick of time. Because Sam had vanished into thin air, and Sam wouldn’t have vanished like that unless duress were involved. They may have never said it out loud, but back then Dean knew, _knew_ that they were in love, that he was as much Sam’s world as Sam was his and that Sam would never have left him without a word if there hadn’t been some intervening cause.

Back then, Dean knew a lot of things.

But as time went by, as the possibility of actually finding his brother became increasingly remote, and the chances that Sam was permanently gone increasingly high, he stopped imagining altogether. It was too painful, too surreal, to picture a world where he had Sam back with him, a world where he didn’t comb missing persons and morgue reports over his breakfast. The rescue fantasies still slipped into his dreams, on the rare times he slept deeply enough to dream, but actively, he tried to tamp down on those hopeful thoughts, to deal strictly in reality.

Dean isn’t stupid. A part of him knows that if Sam is out there and alive, whatever has been keeping him from contacting Dean has to be serious. Severe amnesia, or actual kidnapping by someone good enough to not only get Sam, but keep him, or even drug addiction. His list of possibilities is heart-stopping and ever-expanding.

 _Unless, of course, he never contacted me because he didn’t_ want _to._

That insidious thought has slipped in more and more often as the years have slipped by. It’s the worst thing Dean can imagine, and doesn’t he feel like a selfish asshole every time he thinks that way because the worst possibility should have been a dead Sam, not a Sam that’s simply left him behind. And yet.

And yet if Sam had left him in limbo for more than four years because he’d simply decided never to speak to Dean again well. Well Dean’s not sure he’d see much point in living anymore.

Dean had known, back when everything started, that what they were doing was dangerous. But he’d thought it was risky because they might get caught, because he might get arrested (and he was pretty sure Dad wouldn’t bail him out for that one), not because Sam never wanted it. Sam was the one who had wheedled him, argued him into submission, and finally just pleaded until Dean gave in, laid hands on his baby brother in a way he’d had to force himself to never think about since Sam slipped past his fifteenth birthday and grew into something undernourished and beautiful. He’d doubted himself plenty, his own twisted sickness, had doubted his actions even as he conceded defeat, but he’d never once doubted that, for some reason, Sam really believed that he wanted his brother.

But what if they _were_ wrong? What if Sam had finally come to his horrified senses and felt he had no choice but to run away? It’s a terrifyingly possible possibility, especially since—God, the night Sam vanished. Dad gone for the first time in weeks, the two of them finally able to do more than grab a few shared minutes in the bathroom or outside on a run. Sam had been teasing him all day and the minute they were sure the truck was long gone (Dean always made them wait a couple hours, just in case), he’d had his Sammy under him, naked and hungry and soft to the touch, open and just as desperate as Dean was, too. And Sam had bitten his way up and over Dean’s pulse, begged so sweetly into the humid space between their bodies, and Dean had wanted it, too, far too much to hold out. It was the first time they’d actually…the first time Dean had finally….

Dean coughs around the tightness in his throat and eases the death grip he’s got on the Impala’s steering wheel, fingers aching from the squeeze as he tries to calm his breathing to the tempo of “Fire Lake” – o _h lord, am I really here at last_. Now that he knows for a fact that Sam is alive, those insidious thoughts are harder to rein in, dragging him down into a bleak introspection that’s much better reserved for someone like his little brother. Dean is more for doing, less for agonizing, thanks. But when he’d seen that tape?

Since Sam’s disappearance, Dean has dropped any and everything at a moment’s notice to go tearing across the country on even the smallest of leads. But when he actually found out Sam was alive? He’d stayed in that motel room for three days before he could convince himself to get on the road. Thinking about it now burns him up with shame, makes him fidget behind the steering wheel. Yes, he’d been dangerously sleep-deprived, especially after staying up until well after dawn on his computer and flipping madly between news channels to confirm and re-confirm and just make absolutely sure that he’d actually seen what he thought he’d seen, that his needy, drunken brain hadn’t just hallucinated the one thing it had been longing for years to see. By the time he’d convinced himself that this time, yes, Sam was really alive, for real, his hands were shaking minutely from exhaustion. So he’d popped a few sleeping pills and passed out until after the sun had sunk back beneath the horizon.

But everything after the unavoidable necessity of sleep had just been weakness. Fear. Consuming thoughts that Sam had stayed away on purpose, that Sam never wanted to see him again. That he had found the answer he’d been seeking when he found out his little brother was alive, and anything further was selfishness. Except what if he wasn’t? What if Sam really was lost, or hurt, or had his memories taken away? What if Sam was waiting to be found?

His mind has been running the same endless loop for seventy-two hours, and he’s mentally, emotionally exhausted.

What it came down in the end was that even if Sam has been hiding from him, he owes Dean this. He owes Dean for everything Dean gave him, owes him for giving Dean everything and then taking it all away, for destroying the last four years of Dean’s life.

At the very least, Dean deserves answers, and he’s not leaving Montana without them.

 

{***}

 

The coffee they sell at the local provisions store here tastes like shit. Worse shit than most of the highway gasoline-in-a-coffee pot Sam used to have to drink on stake outs with his brother. He doesn’t particularly enjoy venturing out into town but sometimes, he just can’t take another minute of feeling the lining of his stomach being slowly eaten away by acid just to get his caffeine fix. And he has to drink so much of it now.

But the coffee at the restaurant is decent, at least, so when he’s got the afternoon shift at the bookstore, he’ll wander in for lunch, sit on the stool with the peeling red pleather cover in the back corner of the room, have a cup or two while he reads whatever book he’s currently working through. Right now, it’s the second book in a children’s series, _Harry Potter_ , that had come out over the summer. He’d been a little hesitant to read it, but one of his co-workers had insisted. He has to admit he’s pretty hooked. He’d fallen asleep last night with it spread open on his chest. Fortunately, the third book has already come out, should be shipping into the store sometime this month, so he won’t have to wait.

Sam’s life now is…simple, in a lot of ways. More simple than he’d ever imagined it could be, before. He’s even thinking of going to college online, getting a degree because he’s got the time. This isn’t the first time he’s had the thought though. For some reason, he can never seem to commit.

He finishes the book’s last chapter just before his watch alarm beeps to let him know it’s time to head for work. _Back into the Muggle world, indeed_ , he muses, swallowing down the cold, bittersweet dregs of coffee sludge and dissolved sugar at the bottom of his mug as he gets to his feet, grabs his jacket where it’s been keeping the stool next to him empty.

“See you tomorrow, Sam?” Patsy asks him from behind the counter. Of everyone he’s met since he came to Blackbeech, she’s one of his favorites. Although he always had Dean growing up, he’s never had a mother. He thinks Patsy must have been pretty good at it, thirty years or so ago in her time.

“It’s my day off,” he answers with a shrug. “But you know I can’t stay away for long.” Her deep scratch of a laugh follows him out the door and into the October air.

He knows that, ostensibly, it’s chilly, starts getting that way early here when the syrupy humidity of summer gives way. Wearing his jacket in weather like this is a habit he still hasn’t dropped, even though he doesn’t need it anymore, and he settles it onto his shoulders, tucks his hands into the pockets and hunches down into the weight of it. The familiarity of this jacket has become comforting, finally, although it had taken time. There’s just something about layering up that makes him feel ready to be out in the world.

He remembers when he’d grown out of the jacket he’d brought with him here, the last one Dean had bought him, before. Remembers how that, of all things, had made him feel truly alone.

Sam’s barely down the diner steps when he smells it. His shoulders tense up involuntarily, and he sighs, deeply. _Fuck_.

“Hey, Sammy.” The voice from over his shoulder is probably trying to sound friendly, but it just comes out overly-familiar and unpleasant.

Sam turns around reluctantly. “Hi, Reggie,” he says politely, while Reggie peels himself away from the faded blue cinderblocks at the diner’s base where he’s clearly been waiting. At least he’d respected Sam’s request not to be bothered while he was eating. After the fifth time. “It’s Sam, remember?” he continues evenly, although inside his blood’s already up. He can’t count the number of times he’s made _that_ request.

“Sure,” Reggie says easily, like he does every time, and Sam’s hands curl into fists in his coat pockets while he forces himself to exhale slowly. “Headed to work?”

“Yep, and I’m gonna be late so…” Sam trails off, sticks a thumb over his shoulder and starts to turn in the direction he was originally headed, but he’s stopped by a too-firm grip on his elbow, Reggie spinning him back around like he’s got a right to do it.

 _Breathe_ , Sam reminds himself.

“So,” Reggie continues, leaning in much closer than Sam wants him, smile all white teeth and beguiling affability, “I was wondering if you’d thought about my offer.”

Sam closes one hand around Reggie’s wrist, removes the offensive fingers that are hooked into the crook of his other arm. “For the last time, I’m not interested,” he says stiffly, staring the asshole down, right in the eyes, unflinching.

“But sweet—”

“Not. Interested,” Sam enunciates clearly, not fully able to keep a low growl out of his voice. He’s squeezing the wrist in his grip hard enough that it has to be uncomfortable, but Reggie doesn’t so much as clench his jaw. _Can’t look weak, after all_.

Instead, Reggie’s practically leering now, leaning in close enough to Sam to smell him. “Come on, Sammy, aren’t you sick of playing hard t—” The rest of the words choke off in his throat because Sam’s shoved him bodily into the diner wall, forearm pressing ruthlessly into Reggie’s throat.

“My name. Is Sam.” His voice is nothing but a low, dangerous rumble now, and he can feel the adrenaline in his system pushing him to fightfightfight at the same time a vile part of him just wants to give in. He leans in close to Reggie’s rapidly reddening face, bares his teeth. “I’m not interested. I will _never_ be interested. So, for the last time, leave me _the fuck_ alone.” He presses in with his forearm even harder, knowing from years of fight practice and years of instinct when he’s just on the edge of crushing pressure, and then he’s shoving himself away. Reggie’s hands go to his throat, eyes wide and angry.

Sam stumbles back a few steps, glances up at the diner windows where the patrons are staring at him like he’s some kind of undiscovered insect, weird and fascinating and maybe a little gross. Only Patsy is giving him a sympathetic frown where she’s standing, watching through the glass door with the diner’s portable phone in her hand, probably to call Bill if things had turned ugly.

He wipes a hand down his face, ashamed to realize it’s trembling almost invisibly, and hunches down into his coat as much as possible as he turns away.

“Whatever you’re waiting for, Sam,” Reggie gasps out behind him, “it’s not coming.” The wheezing voice raises to chase him down the street. “When are you gonna let it go, huh? When are you gonna accept what you are and stop acting like such a _freak_?”

Sam doesn’t stop, doesn’t turn around. There’s no point.

They both know Reggie’s right.

He’s almost made it to the end of the stretch of stores that make up the entire center of town, the bookstore where he works the second to last shopfront, when the phone in his front pocket starts ringing. Which is odd, because he’s not actually late yet and who else would be calling him besides his manager or Zach, who he knows for a fact is already working today?

He takes the phone out of his pocket, flips it open, puts it up to his ear. “Hello?”

“Hello, Sam?” The voice on the other end is female, breathy, uncomfortable. “This is…this is Rachel, from…” she clears her throat, “from the Gas’n’Sip in Malta? You, um…you gave me your number in case I needed it for the police?”

“Oh yeah, Rachel. I remember.” He knows his hearing’s not _that_ extreme, but he swears he can hear the frantic beat of her heart through the phone line. She’s clearly afraid. “Is everything okay?”

“Sure, It’s just that—well, there’s someone here to see you and he won’t…uh.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “He won’t leave.” He can hear the click of her dry throat swallowing through the static over the line.

Sam goes suddenly, briefly numb, just a complete shutdown of every anatomical system with shock, only to slip back into his body with a pounding heart and sweating palms. The call could be about anything, could be anyone smart enough to figure out what was going on in that security footage after Sam had messed up and gotten himself caught on tape pulling stupid heroics. It could be anyone, but somehow, Sam knows it’s not. “It’s okay, Rachel. Please don’t be afraid, I promise you’re fine.” He takes a steadying breath, tries to keep his voice calm. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Just tell him—tell him I’m coming.”

“Sure, Sam,” Rachel answers, and her voice is still thin but there’s nothing Sam can do about it. “I’ll—I’ll see you soon.”

Sam flips his phone closed, then hits himself several times in the forehead with his fist.

 _Fuck me_ , he thinks, and ignores the way all the blood pumping from his heart is singing _Dean, Dean, Dean_.


	3. behind what's happening

Dean’s not pacing. He might _want_ to be pacing, but he’s keeping himself under control, leaning against the so-dirty-it’s-grey façade of the gas station, arms crossed, eyes scanning endlessly across the landscape in front of him. There’s not much else on this part of the highway, some backwater hick road deep in nowhereland with a McDonald’s hoping to tempt interstate travelers into stopping and an auto service center that’s as dusty as it is dilapidated. Dean’s almost not surprised some idiot tried to pop this place. It would probably take the cops twenty minutes to get here. Then again, how much exactly had the guy thought would be in the till? Selecting a target to knock off is a skill Dean’s honed over the years; clearly, the gas station assailant lacked his level of experience.

Dean’s not checking his watch. He doesn’t need to, because his body has always just innately kept track of secondsminuteshoursdays ever since Sam went away, cataloging their separation subconsciously all that time. So he knows it’s going on an hour since the phone call, since that poor girl behind the counter had smiled so thinly at him and said he should just stay put, he’ll be here soon.

Dean’s also not breathing normally, but he’s trying to ignore that.

He glances over his shoulder, through the streaked glass of the front window, finds Rachel watching him not at all surreptitiously. He knows he scared her, feels a little bad about it somewhere deep and distant right now, somewhere underneath the near-panic that’s consuming his entire chest cavity, that he only lets out by drumming a rhythm, antsy fingers on denim-clad thigh, some song he knows by heart but is too distracted to pick out which one. It’s just that he’d been so shocked, so totally caught off guard in a way he hadn’t thought was possible until he had seen his brother on that TV. It seems to be happening to him a lot lately. So maybe he hadn’t been the best at controlling himself.

This gas station, scene of the security cam footage, was supposed to be step one of unknown. The news hadn’t said anything about Sam’s name, hadn’t given any personal information, which meant Sam had probably bailed the second he thought the situation was safe and way before any cops showed up. Winchester instincts, right down to the core, whether Sam knows he’s a Winchester or not. But this was just gonna be the start of the path to finding his brother. A case like this, an almost random sighting, there were too many pieces to put together. Was Sam just travelling through? Could he live somewhere in the area? Were there receipts, had he filled up his tank, had the clerk seen him before?

Except when he’d walked up to the woman in the regulation blue vest working at the counter, when he’d held up his print out of the clearest angle of Sam’s profile that had shown up on the grainy security footage and started asking questions, it became clear pretty quick that Sam hadn’t just been at the gas station by happenstance. This woman _knew_ Sam, or at least had seen him before, and what’s more, she knew his _name_ , had his _phone number_. She’d tried to brush him off at first, “Oh just give me your contact information, he comes in here sometimes, I’ll let you know when I see him again,” but her eyes had been careless, straying to anything in the room but Dean’s face, textbook signs of a witness holding something back. So maybe he’d pushed a little, gotten a little desperate. He’d thought his miles had been shortened to yards, but in reality he was inches away from his brother.

Oh well. At least it got results.

He starts every time the rumble of a car engine comes into hearing range, almost has a heart attack when a twenty-year-old pick-up pulls into the lot, but the driver is a grizzly of a man Dean’s surprised can fit behind the steering wheel, who wanders inside while his tank is filling and wanders back out with a case of Natty Light under one arm. He tears into the paperboard and pops the tab on a can one-handed as he gets back behind the wheel. Classy.

_Come on. What the fuck is taking so long?_

It’s cold enough that he’s thinking about going back to the car for another layer to throw on between his t-shirt and the leather jacket, thinking about giving in to the all-consuming need to just _do something_ , maybe pull out the crumpled half-pack of Marlboros in the glove box and get some nicotine into his blood to calm him down, when just like that, a figure appears on the horizon. It’s way, way too far away for Dean to know it’s Sam, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the fact that he knows it’s Sam. Every muscle in his body tenses up all at once, he feels the sudden urge to get in his baby and turn over the engine and get the everloving fuck out of here _right now_ , he’s not sure he’s breathing at all anymore, just a deer in headlights, an animal at the slaughter watching his executioner come closer.

He’s so terrified, he feels gorge in his throat.

He’s so happy, he could cry.

Sam walks and walks, quick but even-paced like he’s not worried at all.

Sam stops, leaves a space between them that’s healthy but not unreasonable.

Dean doesn’t know what to do, stands frozen like the ten feet of cracked gray asphalt between them is the goddamn Grand Canyon and he can’t even shout to Sam on the other side. He doesn’t know if Sam knows him, or if he’s just being the thoroughly good guy Sam is all the way down in his bones and coming to rescue Rachel from the no-good asshole that was scaring her. Doesn’t know if Sam wants him here at all, but he’s still so blood-racing happy to see his brother in front of him that he’s about to fucking lose it, just gonna come out of his skin right here, messy and dead.

Sam’s changed, of course he has, just like Dean knew he would, but knowing it and seeing it are something different entirely, especially when all the secret parts of Dean weren’t so sure he was ever gonna see it again. Sammy’s grown, tall enough that even from this distance Dean can tell he’s taller than his big brother. Sam used to joke with him, after his third or fourth or eighth growth spurt that had him stretching bone lean limbs over every crisp motel bedspread, eyes puppy wide as he asked “Will you still love me when I’m taller than you?”

The answer is _yes_.

He’s bigger everywhere, too, shoulders broader, muscle apparent all down the lines of his arms in his jacket that looks too light for the weather and almost too small. He still manages to look thin, though, body nipped in tight at the waist like Dean’s hands are meant to rest there. Hair even longer now, a bit shaggy, so that Sam’s bangs brush down over his eyebrows and it curls up a bit near his neck. Skin tan, cheeks flushed from his walk, eyes a bit damp from the wind. He looks so alive, and Dean ignores the insistent pressure that appears behind his eyes.

He opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. He can’t move, can’t even blink over the sandpaper scrape of his eyeballs because what if this is a hallucination and Sam just disappears.

_Alive._

Sam takes two shaky steps towards him, stops with his hands in his pockets.

“Dean,” he says, voice layered thick with too many emotions for Dean to pick just one, but that alone is enough. That’s all Dean needs to hear for his heart to just arrest right there in his chest cavity.

One word, and Dean’s sure that Sam knows exactly who he is. That his brother never forgot him.

Which means that Sam must have been hiding from him on purpose.

 

{***}

 

Dean still hasn’t said anything, and Sam feels sweat itching at the lines of his hands where they’re fisted in his jacket. It’s been probably thirty seconds, but his brother’s just staring and so Sam’s staring back, hoping he doesn’t look as much like a desert wanderer with his first glimpse of water in days as he feels.

It’s just, Sam’s pretty sure that up until this moment he was probably dying and he didn’t even know it.

Dean looks beautiful, something still deceptively pretty and soft about him at twenty-five, but even with his eyes all wide and the pink of his lips pressed into a line, he just looks…more. And it’s not just Sam’s superior vision. Dean’s obviously older, something weary about his eyes that gives Sam a quick, sickening feeling of guilt even without the confirmation that he’s responsible for it. Sam’s spent more time learning and reading than ever, but he doesn’t have one single word in his vocabulary to accurately describe his brother.

He carefully tries to breathe through his mouth without showing it.

Finally, he can’t take the tension anymore, this staring contest that makes him feel like he’s underwater, weight on his lungs holding him down. “Dean?” he says again, a question this time.

“Heya, Sammy,” his brother says, and it catches like the words are sticky in the middle. There’s a hint of a smile touching just one corner of his mouth, but it goes tight and drawn again in an instant. “Long time, no see.”

The hollow space under Sam’s lungs tightens. “Right,” he says, and the word makes him feel scooped out and empty inside because the reason Dean’s here is that Sam disappeared four years ago, and if his brother hasn’t figured it out already, he’ll know soon enough that Sam did that voluntarily, a thing even Sam can recognize is pretty fucked up despite all his very good reasons for it. A thing Sam’s already spent most of the last four years so guilty over he was drowning in it. He clears his throat. “We should probably—um, will you come with me? Somewhere we can talk?”

For a second he thinks his brother really might refuse, but Dean gives a tight little nod. “Sure.”

“Okay, yeah, I just live up the road but I walked here so I guess we can take your car unless you’d rather—” Sam recognizes that he’s rambling, nerves getting the better of him. His heart is light and fluttery, aching with wonder in his chest, and every other part of him feels nausea-sick. He’s not even sure what he’s supposed to be feeling, but mostly he feels like he’s taking his very first breath.

“I’ll drive,” Dean cuts in, and Sam almost wants to thank him. They stand there, deadlocked for another long moment, until Dean visibly shakes himself, breaks the connection and moves toward his car. He has to pass by Sam to get there and before Sam realizes what he’s doing, he’s reaching out, grasping his fingers at the leather in the crook of Dean’s elbow, and Dean stops short like an electric shock just went through him.

“I’m sorry,” Sam says hastily, but he’s still moving forward, “I just—.” And then he’s wrapping his arms around his brother, and Dean feels so warm and solid and here, here with Sam when Sam thought he’d had to give his brother up forever, and Sam feels tears in his eyes that he hides in Dean’s neck as his brother’s arms come around him, too.

Dean shushes him, like Sam’s five years old with bleeding knees and not twenty-one and soaked with betrayal.

There’s too much snot in his nose for him to take too deep of a breath, but it doesn’t matter. He can still catch enough of Dean’s scent to make him want to cling even tighter—citrus, cedar, something warm and still like sunshine melting the snow. Instead, he lets go, pulls himself in and back and away until there’s space between them again. “Sorry,” he says again, ducks his head to wipe at his cheeks with his sleeve.

Dean doesn’t look so tense now, but he doesn’t answer, just continues on his way to the car. “You gonna give me directions?” It’s a dismissal, and Sam takes it, swings around the hood to open the passenger door and sink down against the leather like he’s never been here before, like he never left.

The car rumbles to life, filling up the silence between them, and Sam says, “Take a left.”

***

Sam can sense Dean’s confusion increasing right next to the anger he’s keeping locked up under the surface as they drive down Main Street. There’s not a single other car on the road, which isn’t unusual here since only a few people actually own a car of their own. The rest are shared, parked in a lot behind the sheriff’s office and available as needed. There’s a few people on the sidewalks, but most of them are in t-shirts despite the chilly weather. Dean keeps his head turned forward, but Sam knows he’s cataloging all these little weirdnesses with his peripheral vision, chewing his tongue to keep from saying anything about it.

He directs Dean toward his house, watches the way Dean’s knuckles whiten against the steering wheel as they drive down the dirt road lined with almost identical, small gray houses. He’s amazed Dean hadn’t said anything about the Impala’s undercarriage, but then he hasn’t spoken in thirty minutes besides little grunts of acknowledgment for Sam’s directions so Sam supposes it’s not that shocking. Dangerous though, the way Dean’s burning up inside like a powder keg and just about to explode.

“It’s this one,” Sam says, gesturing to a house on the left with a screen door, sixth one down on the road. “There’s no driveway, so you can just pull off wherever.” The Impala eases to a stop, halfway into the patchy grass of his front yard, and they sit for a long moment of quiet, both staring at the trees out past the windshield, both dreading everything that’s about to come. Then they’re moving in tandem, doors creaking open and boots on the dirt, Dean following him up the cinderblock steps of the front porch and waiting at his back while Sam just grabs at the doorknob and swings it open.

God, Sam hopes the neighbors aren’t around this afternoon. Word around here travels so fast they’ll have the sheriff here by dinnertime.

“Come on in,” he says unnecessarily, standing back to give Dean plenty of room to get past him before he shuts the lock-less door behind them.

Dean catalogs the room in front him with learned efficiency, the canvas couch and the little kitchen with minimal counter space and the breakfast bar. It’s all quite small, and Sam feels too big to be here most of the time, but it’s actually not in bad condition. The home here is such a center of community that even the singles take pride in keeping up their places, and well, Sam’s always liked his things neat and tidy.

He clears his throat, starts stiltedly, “If you need to use the restroom, it’s—”

“What the fuck, Sam?” Dean rounds on him, fire in his eyes, hands clenched into fists by his sides, and Sam swallows the rest of his sentence thickly. “Did you join a fucking _cult_ or something?”

 _More like a militia, really_ , Sam wants to say, but yeah, that wouldn’t help anything, and Dean looks about three seconds away from knocking everything off Sam’s bookshelves or maybe punching him in the face. “Jesus, Dean, no!” He doesn’t want to sound this defensive. Dean has every right to be mad. Sam can’t believe Dean’s even here. Sam should be placating, but he’s spent the last four years of his life rebelling against everyone teaching him to be appeasing and it’s hard to control those reflexes now. He takes a deep breath, opens his mouth to continue, but Dean just runs right over him.

“I mean I admit, ‘cult’ was somewhere on my list of possibilities, but so was ‘ _alien abduction_ ’ so maybe it’s still a little surprising that you seem to _be in a cult_.”

“It’s _not_ a cult!” Sam reiterates, wants to grab his brother’s shoulders and shake him but he keeps his hands to himself. “Will you just sit down? Please? I’ll explain, but you have to chill the fuck out.”

Dean stares him down for a long minute, muscle in his jaw ticking rapid fire, before he turns away with a huff of something like disgust, throws himself down on the couch like it offends him. Sam tries not to take it personally. He’s imagined Dean being here a lot of times, dreamed about it even, but it was always just a fantasy. Dean was never, ever supposed to find him. Dean was supposed to think he was dead. Dean was never supposed to find out that Sam’s—

Sam takes a minute to pull himself together, moving over to the fridge and pulling out two beers, Dean’s eyes following him the whole way like his brother thinks Sam might be a ghost. He sets one on the end table near his brother’s elbow, turning away before he can watch the all too familiar gesture of Dean’s ring popping it open. He thinks about sitting on the far end of the couch, but the dread burning up the lining of his stomach is too consuming. He sets his own beer down unopened.

He wants to lie. Would it be better if Dean thought this actually _was_ a cult? That his little brother had just been brainwashed and was perfectly happy here? Would Dean leave then?

Stupid questions. Dean would never leave. Dean’s been rescuing him since he was an infant. As far as Sam can tell, Dean’s been looking for him for the last four years, which means that Sam’s only way out is to convince Dean why Sam had to go, has to stay gone. Why Sam doesn’t need him here.

Which is all one big incredible lie, but Sam’s been selfish enough. He doesn’t get to keep Dean now, not after everything.

He turns to look out one of the small front windows of his house. Carrie from across the street is just walking home from work, throwing confused glances at the big black car in Sam’s front yard. _Great_.

“The night I disappeared,” Sam starts, and Dean makes another one of those noises behind him, disbelief and disgust all wrapped up together.

“Left,” Dean says. “The night you _left_.”

Sam feels his shoulders drop. _Don’t fight it, he’s right to be mad_. “That night,” Sam goes on, finally turning back around to face his brother, “I woke up thirsty. You were sleeping and I didn’t want to wake you up, so I thought I’d just run out to the vending machine.” _I kissed you goodbye_ , he thinks. “I don’t know if you remember but at that motel, the vending was way down at the end of the building, and it was all wooded out back.

“I was pulling the quarters out of my pocket when I heard a noise. It sounded…strange, but not frightening. Like an animal, out in the woods or something. So I didn’t think too much about it. We were in the middle of nowhere, we weren’t even there hunting something animal. I figured, animal out in the woods on a spring night? That’s normal. Not the kind of unsafe I needed to worry about. Anyway, I had my gun, knew you hated when I left without it at night, so even if it were a coyote or something, I’d be all right.”

He’s pacing now, wearing a little track at the front edge of the living room rug, and he forces himself to stop, takes another deep breath. Dean’s eyes are intent on him, but so far he’s barely reacted.

“I got a Sprite, popped it open, was too busy drinking it as I walked out of the little vending room to pay attention. Not that I think it would have mattered. Something hit me, out of nowhere, right in the small of my back. It flung me forward into the wall, and I got my hands out to brace myself but before I could even twist around there was just this—this _pain_ , all down my side, like whatever it was, it was just—tearing something out of me. And then it was on me again, dragging me down to the ground. I must have hit my head on the pavement because that’s all I remember.” Sam’s heart is pounding, mouth dry. He doesn’t like to think about that night. Thinking about it is like living through it all over again. It had happened so fast, he’d barely had time to be scared. His fighting instincts had tried to take over, but all Dad’s training had failed him. He remembers the sensations, something soft but rough brushing the bare skin of his arms, the hot wet spill of his own blood on his skin.

He hadn’t even been wearing shoes. For some reason, he always remembers that.

He’s been staring down his hands, resisting the urge to put them over the phantom ache in his ribs, but when he finally brings his gaze back up to Dean’s, he has to stop himself from crossing the room. Dean’s up on his feet and he looks wrecked, like he’s watching Sam get taken apart right in front of him. Like he should have been there to stop it.

“It’s not your fault,” Sam says, and Dean’s jaw goes tight again. “It’s not,” he insists. “It’s not like I hadn’t run out for drinks or ice or whatever a hundred times on my own before. We were supposed to be two states away from the hunt Dad had gone on. There was no way to know what was gonna happen.”

Dean looks like he wants to argue, but Sam watches his shoulders deflate instead. “So what then?” Dean asks. “You woke up in the hospital?”

Sam laughs drily. “No. I woke up in some modestly appointed guest bedroom in a stranger’s house. Found out later I was outside Sapulpa, Oklahoma. But I was more confused about the fact that I wasn’t in any pain. I remembered getting taken down. I thought I should be dead. I’d never been injured that seriously before, so why wasn’t I in agony?”

He sighs. “I must have made noise rustling around, because pretty quickly, a woman came in, introduced herself to me. And then she—she explained everything.”

Sam looks at his brother, at the coffee table and the ten feet separating them and doesn’t think it’ll be enough to protect him.

“Dean, I’m a werewolf.”


	4. harder still

Dean’s back to sitting on the couch, has been for somewhere between twenty seconds and two hours. He’s not sure which. He’s not sure when he sat down, actually, although it was sometime after the yelling and before Sam had sat down also, crammed as far into the opposite corner as possible, which Dean doesn’t remember happening either but probably it happened after. After Dean sat down, that is.

So something closer to two hours then, he imagines, for all this white noise to recede from his brain.

“You’re telling the truth,” he says finally. It’s better than the first time, when he’d said _Don’t fucking_ lie _to me!_ and Sam said _Why would I lie about this?_ voice thin and eyes red and hands pressed flat against the thighs under his jeans, like he was trying to keep them from shaking.

“Yes,” Sam answers, and it’s got so much sadness and finality in it that it clicks in Dean’s brain, _really_ clicks this time. For the moment anyway.

 _My brother, the werewolf_. Some made-for-TV movie. Sam’s life. _Dean’s_ life.

Dean rubs a hand over his mouth. His beer’s gone flat and warm but he hardly cares, needs it to be something stronger anyway. Jesus fuck, he doesn’t even know where to go from here.

“And in four years, you didn’t think that maybe, I’d like to fucking _know_?” It slips out before Dean realizes he’s gonna say it, the first thing he’s said that hasn’t been a repeat of the same question again and again, but the anger underneath feels good, familiar. Comfortable, like Dad’s jacket. Something to settle his shoulders into.

It seems impossible, but Sam wilts even further in his cramped little corner, like maybe he’s hoping the cushions will eat him right up. He should know better, though. In all their years of hunting, no Winchester had ever come across a couch monster, little kid nightmares aside.

Sam doesn’t answer him for a long moment, and Dean almost regrets the anger, but he isn’t taking it back. Because okay, fine, waking up all stranger in a strange canine land explains Sam’s immediate disappearance, and living in this town, in this too quaint cinderblock cottage explains where his little brother has been at least some of the intervening time, but the really big question is still sitting between them, one giant elephant in the room that Dean’s trying to cram down Sam’s throat through closed teeth.

“The only thing,” Sam finally says, to the hands in his lap in a voice so timid it’s almost comical coming out of his now-giant frame, makes Dean’s stomach clench in second-hand embarrassment. “The only thing I ever—I wanted to tell you. There was nothing….But, I _couldn’t_ , Dean.”

“Why?” Dean presses, leaning in as much as Sam’s shrinking away.

His brother’s breathing is uneven; Dean can see it in the jerk of his shoulders. “Because I—don’t you get it?” Sam finally looks up at him, red eyes and an ugly twist to his mouth. “Dean, I’m a _monster_.”

“No,” Dean denies immediately.

Sam laughs harshly. “Dean if I weren’t your brother, you’d want to hunt me. You’d already be trying to figure out how to kill everyone in this town, and you haven’t even spoken to them yet.”

Dean opens his mouth to protest, finds that he can’t. So maybe he’s a shoot first, questions later sort of guy but in his line of work, that’s not usually such a bad idea. More a life-saving necessity, his own or, more often, someone else’s. So instead he settles on, “Well you _are_ my brother, so how do we fix this?”

“We don’t,” Sam says, hollow. “We can’t.”

Something burns up Dean’s esophagus, like reflux, like he might be sick all over the carpet. Sam’s tone is so final, so sickeningly heartbroken, and like the hundreds of times Sammy’s been hurt before, Dean feels that gutsharp tug to _fix it_. “Hey, come on. There’s gotta be—I’m here now, okay? We’ll...we’ll find something.” He shifts over on the couch far enough to touch a hand to the part of his brother jutting out closest, his elbow.

But Sam’s on his feet in a sudden rush of movement, Dean’s hand falling to bounce uselessly off canvas-upholstered foam. “You don’t fucking get it, Dean,” and now it’s Sam’s turn to raise his voice, apparently. “It’s been four goddamn _years_ , you think I haven’t tried _everything_? You think I _want_ _ed_ to stay this way?”

“No, ‘course not, but you were alone before. Now we can...we can call Bobby or—”

“Bobby can’t help; I already tried. I _tried_.” And Sam starts going on about the places he’s been and the people he’s talked to but Dean’s brain is back on lockdown, white noise and tingling fingertips all over again because _wait what the fuck_.

“Bobby knew?” Dean doesn’t mean it to sound dangerous but the words have that edge, the sound of a knife being unsheathed.

Sam’s hands drop to his sides from where they’ve been gesturing along with his explanation. He huffs his bangs out of his eyes. “What?”

“Bobby knew you were alive?”

“What?” Sam repeats, before his brain catches up. “No!”

“You said—you said he can’t help.” The blunt line of Dean’s thumbnail is harsh where it digs into his palm, squeezed in one white-knuckle fist. The other hand points an accusing finger at Sam’s chest. “You said you _tried_.”

“No Dean, Jesus!” Sam’s frown takes on that defeated edge all over again. “We’re not the only people he helps, you know. I just _wrote_ to him, pretended I was someone else. Some random hunter.”

Dean deflates. Christ, the fucking emotional roller coaster he’s been on all day is gonna kill him. He’s exhausted and he feels wrong all over. All this...this anger, this distrust, all aimed at the one person he always thought he’d have forever, that he’d _trust_ forever. His brother, his partner, his—

“Okay,” he says, counts out his exhale, onetwothreefour. “Okay.”

Sam almost looks like he wants to start something, call Dean out for jumping to conclusions like he would have any day before, but he swallows it down and Dean is hit all over again with that feeling that _everything is just wrong_. Nothing is like before.

Nothing will ever be like before.

Dean’s Sam is gone and Dean doesn’t know this person in front of him at all.

“Okay,” Dean says for a third time, eyes on the unmoving street through the window, trying to get his mind back on track. “Okay, so then, we call Dad and—”

“No,” Sam says, and it’s so firm that Dean looks back at him sharply. “No,” he repeats again, and looking now Dean can see he’s not so much firm as afraid. “You can’t call Dad, Dean, you can’t. You can’t tell him about me.”

“Sam. You’re his _son_. He deserves to know you’ve been playing dead.”

“And what are you gonna tell him, huh? How are you gonna explain to him that his _son_ turned into one of the things he _kills_. Shit, why do you think I ran, Dean? It’s not exactly you I was afraid of!”

Which, point. Dean’s pretty non-discriminatory when it came to taking down things that go bumphowlscream in the night, but Dad does it with the same vengeance that fuels his entire existence. Dad is...ruthless, and even Dean isn’t one hundred percent sure that Dad would hesitate to pull the trigger on a werewolf, even if that werewolf was really Sam underneath.

Besides, it’s not like Dean’s really spoken to the man in over a year. He will call, at some point, because Dad does deserve to know that he was wrong. That Dean was right not to give up. And he was, despite the entire giant mess his life has become in the last few hours. Being here is still the right place to be, and Dean knows that with all the clarity of a gun cocking.

But maybe he doesn’t have to pick up the phone just yet.

“So what? You’ve just given up? This is just it?”

Sam sighs heavy, shoulders slumped like one of those old Greek statues, all worn down by thousands of years of exposure to the elements. “It’s not giving up, Dean. It’s...acceptance. I know this is all new for you, but I’ve had a lot of time to deal with it. Believe me when I say that I’ve looked everywhere, tried everything. I’ve chased leads so small they were barely hints, the kind of shit Dad would have given me hell for wasting my time on.” He looks so earnest, like the first time he’d found a tricky answer to a case they were working and tried to convince Dad and Dean to believe him. Dean’s little brother, every inch of him. Dean’s getting whiplash. “I’m probably the most knowledgeable person in the entire world about werewolves, or at least the human-to-werewolf transition, by now. There just came a point where I…where I knew. That I was stuck like this. That I’m gonna be this way until I die. Or someone kills me.” He adds that last like an afterthought, and Dean’s insides clench up at the undertone of hope in it.

“So then...what?” Dean asks, not sure exactly what he wants to know. “I mean you’re managing it clearly. And if this whole town is—” Dean almost says _things like you_ , but catches himself before it manages to slip out “—some werewolf hide out, you’re all obviously getting by well enough not to draw some hunter’s attention.”

Sam’s got a rueful little twist to his lips. “I can explain that, too, or at least parts of it. But why don’t we do it over lunch? I’m starving.”

He’s been drifting closer to where Dean’s sitting on the couch as their conversation has calmed down, gradually like he’s not aware he’s doing it. When Dean stands up, they’re closer than they’ve been probably since Sam walked up to the gas station, and Dean’s struck all over again with that gripping body flush of relief. _Sam. Alive._ So warm Dean thinks he can feel the heat off his brother’s skin, so real Dean can see every twitch of his eyelashes, every deflation of his lungs. He’s so beautiful, even now, even after all this time and with all this mire between them. He’s beautiful.

"Sure,” he agrees, even though he’s not particularly hungry, because all of a sudden, he feels like he can wait. They’re here together, and whatever Sam thinks, they’ll figure it out. They’ll figure something out.

They’re here together, and they’ve got time.

 

{***}

 

They go to the diner even though Sam was there already today, because Sam was supposed to go to the provisions store after work this afternoon and he’s got very little worth a full meal in his cabinets. Before, Sam had had a pretty big appetite, growing teenage boy and all that (and boy had he been growing back then), but it’s nothing on him now. He can make it a surprisingly long time without eating if he pushes himself, but he also gets a level of satisfaction out of eating meat that feels something like the look sixteen-year-old Dean Winchester would get on his face when he chowed down on a burger.

Sam wonders if he still makes the same face.

He won’t lie to himself, he’s also hoping Patsy might still be around. It’s incredibly wishful thinking to think that word won’t have spread around town by now, not when someone else saw Dean’s car outside his house. Which means Sam is going to need all the help he can get; Blackbeech takes unkindly to strangers, especially unkindly to human ones. But Patsy’s had his back since day one, and she’s a little more liberal than most of the other townspeople.

They take the car again, because it’s a little over a mile to town and Sam doesn’t want the awkward silence of walking, park it in the overgrown lot behind the hardware store. No one’s on the street, but Sam can see through the streaky glass windows that the diner is unusually crowded for this time of day.

_Great._

It goes predictably silent when they walk in, and since werewolves tend to have all the social grace of adolescents, no one even tries not to stare. He can see a few particularly indiscreet people scenting the air, trying to figure out where the stranger behind Sam might have come from.

“Sam!” Patsy’s growl of a voice startles him, and Sam realizes he’s simultaneously holding the door open and blocking Dean from coming through it, trying to hide his big brother behind him like that’s gonna do anything. “Wasn’t expecting to see you again today.”

Sam forces himself to move through the doorway. “Ah well, my plans changed a bit. Still serving lunch?”

Patsy smiles. “Still serving it all, as usual. You boys take a seat, I’ll bring you some coffee.”

Dean follows, close at Sam’s back because he doesn’t need superhuman awareness to notice just how goddamn uncomfortable the room is, and Sam leads them to the back corner booth. He deliberately takes the far side, so that when Dean sits his back is to the rest of the room. Dean’s face gets looks everywhere, but hopefully the back of his brother’s head is uninteresting enough that people will eventually knock off staring.

He watches Dean pull the little plastic menu, probably untouched for years because everyone who comes here knows everything they serve, out of the condiment-holder. He glances over it for a quiet minute, and Sam knows he’s staring just as obnoxiously as everyone else, but he can’t help it. Can’t help but watch the familiar movements of Dean’s hands, the scan of green eyes under half-lowered lids as Dean reads the menu. They used to squeeze side-by-side into every booth table across the U.S., but Sam’s not so sure they’d both fit now. Dean had been almost grown when Sam left, but he’s still managed to grow so much more. Big shoulders under the leather jacket Sam recognizes as their father’s, broad fingers, tidy nails. There’s a scar tucked up next to his hairline that wasn’t there before, and Sam wonders how he got it, wonders if it’s a good story or one that will make Sam sick with fear, give him another nightmare to shake awake from in the middle of the night.

Sam’s dreamed of Dean dying without him many, many times.

“So, what’s good here?” Dean asks, filling up the silence that’s gone even thicker between them, and Sam blinks the wetness out of his eyes.

“Uh,” Sam answers stupidly. “Well, can’t go wrong with the burger. Steak and eggs. The butcher cures his own bacon, so that’s pretty solid.”

Patsy appears then, sets down two steaming yellow mugs and two glasses of ice water in front of them. She waits, politely, and then gives Sam the hairy eyeball.

“Right, um.” Sam spreads his hands out on the table, holds himself steady like the parts of his life that were never supposed to meet aren’t colliding right in front of him. “Dean, this is my friend Patsy. She owns this place. Patsy,” he looks up at the woman, the closest thing to a mother-figure he’s ever had, and his smile is a plea, “this is my brother, Dean.”

Patsy smiles, teeth yellowed with time. “It’s nice to meet you, Dean. We didn’t know Sam had a brother, but we don’t spend too much time talking about the past around here so you’ll have to forgive us.”

“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” Dean says politely. His eyes are a little wide, like he has no idea what’s happening here. Sam wishes he could help, but he doesn’t know either.

“You boys ready to order, then?”

As Patsy walks back to the register to put in their requests, she glares at everyone in the room, and while the tension doesn’t exactly disappear, the other patrons start to turn away, clinking their spoons and going back to the hushed conversations they were having about Sam and his mystery guest before they appeared in the flesh.

“So,” Dean says, and Sam stops compulsively rearranging his silverware.

He takes a deep breath. “So, right, the whole—well, I’ll try to keep it short. I mean, like I said, I’ve learned a lot. But the gist is this—those crazy, bloodthirsty, tear-out-hearts-at-the-full-moon werewolves you know about? They’re not the only kind of wolves. The wolves here, they’re purebred.”

“ _Bred_?” Dean asks, and Sam nods.

“Well, when a mommy werewolf and a daddy werewolf love each other very much—”

“Oh, har har.” The hint of a smile on Dean’s face warms something up in Sam’s blood, and he grins back way bigger than is appropriate.

“Anyway, they’ve been around for thousands of years, these purebreds. They’re more like shifters, or skinwalkers, really. They keep off the grid mostly, places like this where they can keep to themselves and stay way way off the radar of humans. Of hunters. And they’re not—” _monsters_ “—out of control, not like werewolf lore. They change at the full moon, but they stay in control of their minds, their actions. And they can change whenever they want, don’t have to wait for the power of the moon to let them do it.”

Dean seems to be taking this all in very carefully, which Sam appreciates, but his next question catches Sam off guard. “Then what about you?”

He sits back. “What do you mean?”

Dean shrugs, takes a sip of his coffee. “You just, you keep saying ‘they.’ What about _you_?”

Sam looks at his hands for a minute. “Well, I’m not purebred, obviously. I’m not...normal.”

Dean’s leaning in, looking serious when he asks, “So then, around the full moon, do you…?” He makes a vague sort of clawing gesture with his hands. He can’t seem to finish the question, but Sam doesn’t need him to.

“No,” Sam says firmly. “No, I still—I’m still me. I’m still...safe.” Dean seems to go sort of soft, easy with relief, and Sam gets it, gets it completely. When he’d woken up in Oklahoma all those years ago, it was nearly the first question out of his mouth. And he hadn’t believed the answer, hadn’t trusted it, had shackled himself up in silver chains despite the pain for moon after moon, month after month, until he was sure, so so sure, that he wouldn’t hurt anyone. He rubs a thumb absently over his wrist, where under his clothes there’s a band of scarred tissue from his desperate experiments. “But,” he continues after a minute, “I do, um, _change_.”

Dean’s eyebrow quirks like he wants to ask a question about that, but fortunately Patsy reappears with two full plates and then they’re distracted by food. Sam eats his salad, double portion of fish, with singular concentration, because he knows if he doesn’t, he’s gonna eat nothing and watch his brother instead.

Dean’s nearly done, burger gone and dragging a few straggling fries through ketchup, before he speaks again. “So then where do the uh... _bad_ werewolves come from? Are they even related to you...guys at all?”

Sam chews the bite in his mouth as he thinks about his answer. “Werewolfism is sort of like...a virus. If your parents had it, you have it. If you get bitten by someone who has it, you get it. And as far as I’ve studied, it sort of acts the same way. It gets into your cells, changes your DNA, makes new things, turns genes on and off and well, all that stuff. With a helping of something...magical in there as well.

“So the bad wolves, the werewolves of lore, that’s what happens when the genes get too diluted. A purebred bites a human, who bites another human, and then the virus is too different. It’s changed from being in that person’s body and something goes wrong. And the wolf goes wrong. It’s why purebreds take changing so seriously. It’s not allowed, normally at all. You have to get permission from your pack and the person has to consent and...well it’s all a bit complicated.”

“Then what the hell happened to you?” Dean asks, heated, and goddamnit but Sam loves him, loves the big brother who still wants to protect him, who still wants to punish anyone whose ever hurt Sam, even when Sam’s done so much hurting himself.

“You don’t have to be the “bad” kind of werewolf to be crazy.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means the guy who did this to me, he wasn’t supposed to. He was nuts, a zealot.”

“Well where is he now?”

Sam drags his finger through the condensation left behind by his water glass. “He’s dead. They executed him, back in Texas.” The answer doesn’t seem to give Dean any comfort, and Sam gets it. He’d sort of wanted to kill the guy himself, too.

Sam lets his brother stew for a minute, but then he clasps his hands together. “Let’s head out, yeah? We can grab a few things from the store and head back to the house. It’s been a long day.”

Dean nods, stands, and Sam stands with him. His brother goes to pull out his wallet, but Sam waves him away. “We don’t have to pay.”

“How’s that?” Dean asks, waving goodbye to Pasty as he follows Sam out the door.

“It’s sort of a communal living thing? We work to keep the town running and—”

“Sam.” The voice makes Sam cut himself off cold. Like dejavu from this morning, Reggie’s loping outside the diner, only this time, he only has eyes for Dean. “Who’s this?” Reggie goes on, smile barely polite.

Sam doesn’t even want to answer, wants to turn around and walk away without dealing with any of this, not after he’s dealt with so much today already, but it’s out of his hands. Even four years ago, Dean would have reacted hotly to that kind of attitude being directed at him. Who even knows how he’ll take it now.

Dean steps forward to block Sam out behind him. It makes Sam feel strangely warm, safe, even when he knows he should be rolling his eyes. It’s not like he can’t take better care of himself around here than a total outsider like Dean.

“Dean Winchester,” and his brother moves in close enough to stick out a hand.

Reggie takes it, their eyes lock, and Sam tries desperately to figure how to tell his brother to _pull up_ because Dean has no idea what he’s getting himself into here. But Reggie just takes a deep breath, and then his smile goes more relaxed. “Nice to meet you, Dean. Just visiting our Sam, here?”

“He is,” Sam cuts in, “and we have to get going, Reg.” He curls a hand around Dean’s elbow and starts to pull his brother across the street, back towards the hardware store where the Impala is parked. Forget the groceries, he just wants to get out of here. He feels Reggie’s gaze between his shoulder blades for a long time.

“Who was that?” Dean asks once he’s back behind the wheel.

“Who, Reggie?” Sam replies, tries to keep it casual, like Dean could be talking about anyone else. “He’s just some asshole.”

Dean opens his mouth to say more, but Sam stops him with a raised hand. “It’s okay, Dean,” he says. “He’s not anybody you need to be worried about.”

The car pulls out onto Main Street, sinking sun at their backs, and Sam settles into the silence. For some reason, it doesn’t seem quite so damning anymore.


	5. all lost in this

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next will contain mention and discussion of mpreg, although it will not affect Sam or Dean in this story.

Dean didn’t have a plan before coming to Montana, hasn’t had one, really, in four years beyond find Sam. Point A, the present, and point B, Sam, nothing intervening and nothing coming after. It’s where he and Dad had ultimately diverged—John, after months of the same unsuccess, wanting to roll back into the ‘saving people, hunting things’ mentality that had driven them since Mom’s death, set up against Dean’s single-minded determination to find his brother, to never waste a minute that could have been spent on Sam’s trail.

“ _So, uh,”_ Sam had said, a few days after Dean’s arrival, when things had settled into an uneasy truce between them and Dean was only boiling in his own anger for parts of the day, _“not that I’m not, you know, fine with the situation but, uh.” He licks his lips, and Dean finds himself watching closely, feeling an empty ache that stretches into his fingertips, feeling wrong for it._

(This kind of thing keeps happening. Sam out of the shower, dressed but damp with his shaggy hair playing at the tips of his ears and his skin cleanpink and soft-looking; Sam asleep next to him in the bed they’ve been sharing since Dean reluctantly agreed to Sam’s demands that he get off the fucking couch before his knees just gave up, that they were fucking adults, Dean, and could sleep on the same mattress; Sam in his bookstore uniform vest with his arms bulging around the box he’s hauling from the storeroom. Dean can’t help himself, always sees, always notices every same and different detail that makes up his brother now, always finds himself wanting.)

“ _Where’s Dad?”_ his brother had continued.

 _Dean shrugs, focuses for a moment on the onion he’s mincing on Sam’s knicked wooden cutting board. “He’s around,” he answers eventually, which is as specific an answer as he can really give anyway, since he hasn’t actually spoken to Dad in at least two months. The onion-y air stings his eyes, but he resists the urge to wipe them, doesn’t need Sam misinterpreting his actions. “He...he gave up.”_ On you _, Dean doesn’t say, but Sam hears it anyway._

“ _But you didn’t,” Sam says, somewhere between a statement and a question._

_Dean shrugs again, keeps his eyes on the way his knife turns the solid hunk of vegetable into uneven white pieces. He may be good with a blade but hunting techniques aren’t exactly the same as chef’s skills, and he may have grown up cooking for his brother but Hamburger Helper didn’t require too much formal training. “’Course not.” And then, because he knows what’s coming next, “I just—I just knew you weren’t dead, Sam.” He takes a deep breath. “I just knew.”_

_He feels Sam’s eyes on him from where his brother’s working at his own section of counter on the other side of the stove, making some kind of spice rub for the venison they’re having for dinner. “I get it,” Sam says, quiet. “I knew, too.” He clears his throat, and Dean feels hyperaware of all of Sam’s movements, the soft sounds his clothes make as he shifts in place, the distance between them. “I mean, I had nightmares all the ti—I—um, but I was never actually afraid. I just...I’d know, you know? If something had—I had to believe I would know.”_

“ _Right,” Dean says, and if his voice is rough then it’s from the sulfuric acid in the air. He keeps chopping._

Even now, more than six weeks since Sam crossed gas station pavement back into his life, he still hasn’t managed to pick up the phone, doesn’t know what he’d say if he did. Well, apart from ‘I told you so,’ but John Winchester has never taken kindly to that kind of attitude. Even when it’s completely fucking justified. Dean knows that if he does call, Dad’ll want to see Sam. And Dean also knows that there’s no way in hell he’d bring Dad here. He’s still just as wary of the werewolf population as they are of him, but so far, there’s been nothing to indicate that any of them are truly monsters.

And he’s been looking. As sneakily as possible, given Sam’s repeated, almost desperate insistence that he not let anyone else in town know he’s a hunter by trade, but he’s definitely been watching. Sure, things are _weird_ here by Dean’s definition, all that communal sharing, small town, everyone’s-in-everyone’s-business lifestyle, but they don’t seem to be _dangerous_ , not to anything but the local fauna anyway.

Still, there are a few things he’s noticed, like the fact that a lot of the townspeople here don’t seem to talk to Sam very much. His brother, who used to be this mile-a-minute, obnoxiously chatty teenager with a smile that could win the hearts of housewives all over America, has become this quiet, almost shy man, who hunches his shoulders and laughs under his breath. He’s met Sam’s friends, all three of them—Patsy from the diner, who seems to think Sam is her own sweetest child; Zach, who works at the hardware store and strikes Dean as gentle, effeminate, the same kind of geek that Sam’s been befriending his whole life; and Bill, who seems to keep the whole town organized and running smoothly, some sort of combination mayor-sheriff, if Blackbeech had either—and they’re nice enough, but most everyone else seems only to tolerate Sam, all polite conversation and hollow smiles.

It doesn’t sit right with Dean, Sam being treated like some kind of outcast. Pisses him right the fuck off actually, only more so that Sam refuses to talk to him about it, much less demand the kind of respect from these jerks that he deserves. His entire life, Sam has hated being on the edge of things, has hated never fitting in and not belonging. And now he’s settled down in one place but seems to be suffering the same outsider status that their nomadic lifestyle had forced on him as a child. Dean can see that it hurts him. Dean doesn’t like it.

And then there’s Reggie.

Ugh.

Reggie. Is an asshole. Gets Dean’s hackles up just by existing, just by the way he invades Sam’s personal space like he’s got a license to it. Just by the expression he puts on Sam’s face. Sam keeps insisting that whatever’s going on, it’s none of Dean’s business, it’s his own shit to deal with, but Dean’s losing patience. Because if it’s Sam’s problem, he sure as hell doesn’t seem to be taking care of it.

Case in point, Sam doesn’t know that Dean knows (thank you, Zach), but Reggie’s apparently been hounding him after his work shifts, on the mile or so walk from town to Sam’s little cinderblock cabin, really the only time that Dean’s not with his brother. Since he got here, they seem to be doing everything together—breakfast at Patsy’s, grocery shopping, cooking dinner for the two of them in Sam’s cubbyhole kitchen that’s still nicer than most of what they had growing up. It’s strangely comfortable, domestic in a way that Dean’s never had a chance to get used to.

He kind of hates it. He is not, by nature, sedentary, and he’s not opposed to it as a general concept, even likes the idea of his very own mattress and pillow and, dare he say it, decent water pressure that he can rely on, but here, where he’s so obviously an outsider, where he constantly feels like he’s intruding on Sam’s already small space, here is not a place that Dean feels settled.

So maybe it’s that itch under his skin that makes him impulsive, that sends him out the front door (unlocked all the time, and how Sam could ever have grown used to that is beyond him). He leaves the Impala, because it gets him more stares than almost anything else when he drives her into town, but pats her hood fondly on his way down the road. She’s getting ansty too, he’s sure. Maybe they should go for a drive, just for a few hours. Maybe Sam could go with them.

He heads down the gravel road, tracks the now-familiar path from the little block of houses where Sam lives along with a dozen or so werewolves, each in their own cabin, and over to Main Street. He walks behind the line of shops, because when he walks down the sidewalk in front he gets nothing but stares, sometimes even the occasional shoulder check from the dudes who aren’t afraid to let Dean know at every opportunity they’re not happy he’s still hanging around but can’t do much about it because he has Bill’s approval. There’s a little alley between the bookstore and the hardware store next to it, a cut-through to get to the dumpsters out back, and sure enough, Dean can hear voices carried downwind to him before he even turns the corner. And maybe it’s a little wrong of him to eavesdrop, but he’s asked Sam for an explanation, repeatedly, and his brother isn’t giving him anything to work with so...so he softens his stride and edges up to the corner, puts his back against the side of the building and listens.

“-the last moon,” Reggie is saying, and Dean thinks back to three weeks ago, when Sam had disappeared out into the woods behind his house and made Dean swear on his life not to follow. “You should have joined us.”

“I never join you,” Sam says back, and Dean feels a little satisfied at just how icy his tone is. Maybe Sam _is_ handling himself.

Except according to Zach, this keeps happening, so maybe not.

“Next week’s a good time to start.” Sam doesn’t verbally respond to that, but Reggie can’t seem to let the point go. “Come on, Sam, you don’t even smell like yourself anymore. Starting to stink of that human all the time now.”

“I don’t exactly have a guest bedroom, Reggie,” Sam replies, and Dean wonders if Reggie can tell just how close Sam is to snapping, that clean edge of fury tucked into his words that Dean knows from hearing a hundred fights between his Dad and his brother.

“All sorts of extra bedrooms in mated housing,” Reggie says back, which doesn’t make much sense to Dean at all, but he’s distracted from wondering about it by the sudden sounds of a scuffle, quick little steps and underbreath grunting. When he rounds the corner, Sam’s got Reggie’s arm in a painful-looking grip, the guy’s dark skin flushing light around the bruisepress of Sam’s fingers, and forced back against Reggie’s chest.

“How many times do I have to tell you not to touch me before you get it?” Sam growls, and the timbre of it makes the hair on the back of Dean’s neck stand up.

“Sammy!” Deans says brightly, and two sets of eyes turn to him simultaneously, Sam’s catching the light of the setting sun with an eerie sort of glow.

“Dean?” Sam looks relieved and pissed off at the same time, but Dean decides he’ll worry about those consequences later. His brother shakes his head a little, and that otherwordly light fades away.

“You having a party without me?” Dean says, stopping when he’s a few steps away from them, arches an eyebrow at Sam, head tilted just a fraction in Reggie’s direction. _You need help with this?_ it asks, but Sam just looks at him.

Reggie pulls his arm out of Sam’s slackened grip and takes a step back, squaring his shoulders and turning his attention to Dean. “Still here, then,” he says drily, and Dean just smiles back.

“Ah you know how it goes.” He hooks an arm around Sam’s neck, draws his brother in, doesn’t miss the way Reggie goes stiff where he’s standing. “Got a lot of catching up to do after four years. Ain’t that right, Sammy?”

Sam gives a big, fake grin that’s not convincing anybody. “You bet.” He pats Dean’s chest resolutely.

Reggie turns his gaze back to Sam, one eyebrow raised. “Sammy, hm?”

“Oh fuck off, Reggie,” Sam sighs, and then he’s pushing into Dean to get them both moving until they’re walking down the alley. Dean throws a glance over his shoulder as they turn the corner, and Reggie’s watching them, not blinking, mouth set in a fierce sort of frown.

Sam shakes Dean’s arm off immediately once they’re behind the hardware store, and Dean tries not to feel too miffed. No touching, enforced boundaries. These are things that Dean wants, that Dean needs, because he still feels like every minute he’s not actively mad at Sam, he’s in no man’s land.

He glances sideways; Sam’s face is dark, wrinkle between his eyebrows and lips a thin line. Dean feels tight and unsettled, too. That confrontation hadn’t been much of anything, but Reggie makes him feel like a cat whose fur has been rubbed the wrong way, worked up for a fight that doesn’t come. “Fucking Reggie,” he grouses. Sam rolls his eyes, but the corner of his mouth lifts in a weak half-smile so Dean will take it.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Sam asks, giving Dean side-eye like he already knows the answer as they amble through the cracked pavement backlots of the stores lining Main Street, every building painted a uniform gray on its backside. From the front, they’re not bad—rustic but taken care of, all cool mountain colors and wood accents, years of sun and snow in their bones.

“Wanted to make a pie,” Dean lies smoothly, leading Sam down another little alley that will put them out near the grocery. “Needed to hit the store, thought I’d pick you up from work.”

Sam scoffs, mutters something under his breath that sounds distinctly like Zach’s name. “Have you ever even made a pie?” he asks skeptically.

It’s Dean’s turn to scoff. “Have I made a pie? Have _I_ made a pie?” He smacks Sam on the shoulder as they emerge on the sidewalk and cross the street towards the store. “No,” he concedes after a moment. “ _But_ we’ve been doing a lot of culinary...kitchen things and whatever, and dude, we’re missing the most important one!”

“Pie?” Sam says.

“Pie!” Dean agrees. He has to work a little harder than is reasonable to keep the smug look off his face, since he not only managed to come up with this scheme on the spot, but Sam is clearly going to go along with it. Pie is not a bad reward for checking in on his little brother.

He’s grinning as they head into the store together, and he realizes with a sense of weirdness that it’s the first time he’s smiled like that, without noticing, probably since he lost Sam. The first smile on his face without his putting it there consciously, the first one so natural he wasn’t even aware it had happened. Sam smiles back at him too, although he still looks somewhere between annoyed and bemused, and Dean feels _good_.

He feels almost happy, and it shouldn’t be a revelation, but it is.

He grabs a basket, makes a beeline for the produce aisle while Sam veers off, hopefully to pick up flour or butter or other pie things. Dean’s not too sure on the details. It’s fall, so there’s a variety of kinds of apples on the shelves, and he has no idea where to start. Are gala apples used in pie? Granny smiths? Whatever the hell a Crispin is? The only apples Dean remembers from his childhood were the hard, near-flavorless red delicious that he used to buy for Sam’s lunchbox when they could afford it, which is exactly why Dean believes apples should not be touched unless they are basking in butter and cinnamon and sugar, all wrapped in a flaky crust and preferably with a big scoop of ice cream on the side.

But maybe Sam knows, somewhere in all the domestic knowledge he seems to have picked up during his four years apart from Dean, gleaned mostly, he claims, from trial and error, and also Patsy at the diner who had insisted that Sam couldn’t eat there for every meal. And the diner definitely had pie some days, so it’s possible that Sam has learned to make a pie and has just been holding out on Dean all these weeks. Besides, Sam loves his fruits and veggies so much that he probably knows all about each different apple’s life story. Sam is probably the one to ask in this situation.

Dean takes his empty basket and weaves his way out of the little produce area with its haphazardly placed wooden bins. He scans down the aisles as he goes, looking for a glimpse of Sam. He finds him at the very back of the store, along the wall of refrigerated goods with a pound of butter in one hand and a half-gallon of milk in the other. He’s talking with a man, a friendlier look on his face than he usually gets with the townspeople, which settles a niggling bad feeling that furls out in Dean’s chest now every time he sees Sam caught in a conversation. The guy has his back to Dean, so all Dean can see is that he’s at least half a foot shorter than Sam, has curly dark hair, and is standing in a strange way, lower spine arched like a chick who's trying to stick her tits in your face. Except this is a dude and Dean’s not really sure what that kind of stance would accomplish and also he’s gonna be a little pissed if _another_ one of these people is trying to flirt with his baby brother.

But then Sam’s gaze is drawn to him and the ease in his expression falters a little bit, which makes the guy he’s talking to turn around to see what’s putting that look on Sam’s face, and Dean sees that the reason the strange guy is standing in a strange way is that he’s sporting what is unmistakeably a pregnant belly.

Like the belly of a woman who is pregnant.

Like this guy, who is clearly a guy, is not just overweight or something, but has a baby inside of him and _what the actual fuck_?

Dean’s staring, and even he has enough social grace to feel rude about it, but _seriously, the fuck_?

He finally manages to drag his eyes away, and the guy is looking sheepish and uncomfortable, and Sam is giving him a glare that simultaneously says _close your mouth_ and _let’s talk about this later_. So despite his very rightful desire to demand an explanation, or at least say any of the hundred or so expressions of complete surprise bouncing around in his head, Dean just closes his mouth.

Because if there’s one thing he’s been forced to learn since he got to Blackbeech, Montana, it’s that while this may not fully be Sam’s world, Dean doesn’t belong in it at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got very long, so I decided to split it in two. The next chapter is also most of the way completed and will give you Sam's perspective. I should have it out shortly, so hopefully that will make up for my slowness. Fair warning, it may increase the total chapter count of the fic by one.
> 
> As always, your thoughts are appreciated!


	6. break the silence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains discussion of mpreg, but it does not affect Sam or Dean in this story.

They don’t talk on the way back to Sam’s house, which isn’t surprising. Sam can see the consternation all over Dean’s face, and his brother must be chewing on his tongue to keep it from wagging. But thankfully, he does manage to wait. At least until the very second Sam closes the door behind them.

“Dude,” Dean says, and Sam snorts a little laugh under his breath as he makes his way into the kitchen because Dean is just so...Dean.

“Dude,” Dean says again, but this time he goes on. “Tell me I just hallucinated or something. I mean, that guy was...he was...”

“Pregnant,” Sam finishes, tone polite because he went through all of this himself at one point. Granted, he’d handled it a little better, because on the scale of all the fucked up, supernatural shit that had just been dumped into his lap, male pregnancy didn’t seem too serious. He hadn’t realized how serious it could be for him specifically, not until later.

He starts unpacking their groceries from the cloth bag, because even Dean’s crisis over male pregnancy didn’t prevent his brother from insisting on making the pie. Or maybe because asking Sam about different kinds of apples was the smoothest recovery Dean could think of after he’d stared at Matt for a good twenty seconds with his jaw somewhere around his knees.

“Right, that,” Dean says, one hand rubbing at his mouth. “Except _no_ , not _right_ , Sam! What the fuck? Guys can’t get pregnant!”

Sam sighs as he turns to put the vanilla ice cream away in the freezer, then levels his brother with a flat look. “Dean, I have _paws_ every month.” Not that he really wants Dean thinking about that particular aspect of him, but it does put things in perspective. “Does male pregnancy really seem that farfetched?”

“Uh, _yeah_?” Dean counters. He perches himself on one of the stools Sam has set against the backside of the kitchen counter. “Werewolves are...okay, not _normal_ , but normal for us at least. This is just.” He rubs his mouth again, sits quiet for a minute, and Sam finishes unpacking. “Look I’m not trying to be an asshole here, but,” he says, and Sam raises an eyebrow. “But _how_?” Dean rolls his shoulders uncomfortably under the jacket he’s forgotten to take off.

“When a daddy wolf and a daddy wolf love each other very much—”

“I will punch you,” Dean says, glaring, and Sam laughs.

“All right. I can only tell you what I’ve figured out, and it’s not—”

Dean cuts him off again, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, Sam, I get it. You’re not an expert, no one is an expert, werewolves are super secret ninjas, I know. If I didn’t want to know what you thought, I wouldn’t’ve asked.”

That should probably irritate Sam, but instead it wakes a warm sort of feeling in his chest. Sure, he’s been Dean’s guide through all of this by default, but frankly Sam’s a little surprised Dean hasn’t called up Bobby or gone looking for answers on his own, at least that Sam knows of. It feels like he trusts Sam, in this if nothing else.

“Right,” Sam says, as he thumbs through a stack of recipe cards in Patsy’s swirling handwriting. He takes a second to glance over the directions when he finds the right one, and then looks up at his brother. “So, uh, although there are exceptions of course, for reproductive purposes, humans basically have two biological sexes, male and female. But werewolves have a third, sort of, with sex characteristics that we’d consider both male _and_ female. I don’t really know how the chemistry of it works, I mean, there’s not really a lot of science out there. But what it comes down to is that there are werewolves that appear male, _are_ male, except….” He shrugs, trails off as he turns to take down bowls and measuring cups from the cabinets, and Dean finishes for him.

“Except they can...make babies.”

Sam snorts as he starts to spoon flour from the canister on the counter into a plastic cup. “It takes two to make a baby, Dean,” he reminds. “But yeah, I mean. They have a womb, they can, you know, produce another wolf. There’s other things, but it’s all for that same purpose.” He puts the flour in a bowl. He is so not getting into it with his brother about things like heat.

“But _why_?” Dean presses, leaning forward a little in his seat.

“My best guess is they evolved to help ensure reproductive success.” Sam measures salt, starts dicing cold butter into little cubes, hoping his brother will find something else to ask a question about.

No such luck though. “Okay but humans are doing just fine with only two ‘biological sexes’ or whatever, and since werewolves came from humans in the first place, why do they need some weirdo bonus option?”

Sam cuts the butter methodically and doesn’t look at his brother, lets the words out in one even tone so that Dean won’t pick up on what’s important. “Because, generally, we mate for life. And we have small communities, so my guess is it just increases the chances that a successful mating will also result in a reproductive pairing.” He dumps the butter into the flour and salt mixture, starts mashing it in with a fork. “Like any kind of evolution, it’s all about ensuring the future of the species.”

“So all werewolf guys, they can have babies?” Dean jerks up straight in his seat, slaps his palms down on the counter. “Wait, can _you_ have babies?” Sam doesn’t answer for a minute, trying to think of how to explain the whole situation to Dean, but Dean can’t seem to wait. “Sam Winchester, I am your big brother. You tell me right now if you can make assbabies.”

“Jesus, Dean!” Sam drops the fork into the bowl with a clang and glares. They stare at each other for a minute, Dean’s eyebrows making a spectacular attempt to fuse with his hairline, and finally Sam drops his gaze, picks the fork back up sheepishly. He can feel himself blushing and he hates himself for it. “No,” he says finally. “Or...well, no. It’s complicated.”

“It’s _complicated_?” Dean repeats, incredulous. “I ask you if you can grow a freaking _baby_ along with all of that hair and your answer is ‘it’s complicated’?”

“ _Yes_!” Sam insists, mashing away at the mixture in the bowl. “It’s complicated, _I’m_ complicated! When I turned, I didn’t come out right, okay? I’m not _normal_ , not for a human, not for a werewolf, not for anything. No, not all male werewolves can get pregnant, but I’m the kind that should be able to. Only I can’t.” He looks up at Dean now, who is watching him intently. “Whatever makes the change happen, it can’t just transform the human body. It makes you susceptible to magic, but it isn’t magic. It can...it infects you. It can mess with your DNA, it can change the regulation of your genes and make you different, make your body different, but it can’t make you grow all new organs overnight. It makes my body do all these things that I _hate_ , but thank god, it couldn’t do _that_.” He peters out, mortified to realize that there are tears pressing hot and insistent at the back of his eyes, because his stupid body manages to be just freaky enough to always be humiliating.

He turns away from the counter on the pretense of opening the freezer, wipes at his eyes with one hand before putting a handful of ice cubes into a small bowl, adding cold water from the sink. When he turns back, Dean’s on his feet again, looking down at the spread of his own fingers on the Formica.

“That sucks,” he says finally, looking up at Sam with surprising sincerity. Dean’s the type to joke off discussions like this, but maybe he’s feeling sentimental or something. “But, dude, I’m kind of confused. Would you be happier if you _could_ have assbabies?” Ah, there’s the Dean he knows and loves.

Despite himself, Sam feels laughter bubble up in his chest. “Shut up.”

“No really,” Dean insists, “I’m pretty sure that you got out on the good side of this deal.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, soft, smiles at his brother softer. When he looks down at his work, the mixture in the bowl resembles a paste more than the ‘coarse crumbs’ Patsy’s looped script suggests, but he figures for a first attempt, it’ll have to do. Dean doesn’t need to know that he asked Patsy for this recipe with his brother in mind, that he couldn’t ever bring himself to try making it because he wouldn’t have Dean to share it with. He starts adding in the water, a splash at a time, mixing in between until the dough forms up into a ball. He can feel Dean’s eyes watching the movements of his hands, and for once it doesn’t worry him, doesn’t make him wish or hope or wonder. It’s just comfortable.

Sam smooths the dough down, flattens it into a disc. He wraps it in plastic wrap, puts it on the shelf of the fridge. “It has to chill for a few hours,” he tells Dean, and his brother comes around the counter, stands close.

“I’ll help you clean up.”

***

The sun’s down, and they’re watching Wheel of Fortune on the boxy 21-inch propped up on what was probably once a nightstand before it got relocated to singles housing, land of the cast offs. Dean is laughing hysterically, because the clue for the five-letter word is “Where To Find Love” and the contestants have managed to guess only three letters—P, blank, blank, I, S. Sam’s having a hard time not laughing, too, but he really doesn’t want to give Dean the satisfaction. Finally, someone manages to fill the third blank with an R, and Dean calms down. Sam feels content, that calm from earlier still wrapping him up in something that feels warm and welcome and safe in a way he hasn’t felt in the last four years.

At least until Dean says, out of nowhere, “Does Reggie know?”

Sam tenses up immediately, shifts unhappily in his seat. Do they have to talk about him, of all people? “Know what?” he asks, and if it’s a little snappish, well, he’s not going to feel bad about it.

“That you can’t, uh.” Dean pauses for a sip of his beer, and the show rolls over to commercials. “That you can’t get pregnant,” he finishes finally, and Sam’s pleased to see that he looks uncomfortable, too.

Sam takes a minute to answer, because explaining this is a whole ‘nother can of worms to open up. “No, he doesn’t. No one knows, except the doctor and Bill.” At Dean’s curious look, he continues. “I was...I got worried, when I found out what I was. When I realized that some things weren’t—that I was different. He gave me an ultrasound to check for um...the organs that would let me….” He sips his own beer, fiddles at a loose edge on the label. “Well, I don’t have them, anyway. At least not when I’m in human form.”

“And when you’re a wolf?”

Sam shrugs. “Doctor said it wouldn’t matter much, that even if I could, it wouldn’t stick unless I stayed shifted the entire pregnancy. And that’s not really how they handle things around here.”

“And Bill?” Dean prods.

“I told him. I needed to tell someone. But he and Dr. Eastwood—I trust them.”

The show comes back from commercial again, but all of Dean’s attention is on him now. “Don’t you think it might make him back off, if he knew? Reggie, I mean.”

Sam nods. “Yeah, but.” He drains the rest of his beer in one swallow. “When I came to Blackbeech, I didn’t think there were any other options for me. This is where they sent me to live, so this is where I could stay. It’s not like I had anywhere else to go, and I was...I was scared. I was confused. I needed to be around other people like me, so that I could get answers when I needed them, so that I could adjust to being this...this thing that I am now.” He doesn’t look at his brother, because he doesn’t want to see the pity that he knows will be there.

He goes on. “It didn’t take me very long to realize that I didn’t fit in here. The townspeople were welcoming enough, but werewolf society—it’s very traditional. And I don’t—I wasn’t raised here. It’s a whole different culture, and I didn’t know how to be the person they expected of me. And when I started to realize what that was, what someone like me means to them, I didn’t _want_ to be. Just because I can—just because I’m omega doesn’t mean I’m suddenly just gonna roll over, belly up and—!” He cuts himself off abruptly, realizes he’s gone too far. Dean’s looking at him with something between sympathy on his behalf and anger that Sam’s sure is directed at the other denizens of Blackbeech. His whole life, Dean’s never taken kindly to any perceived mistreatment of his little brother.

“An omega?” Dean prompts.

Sam sighs. “A male werewolf who can get pregnant, basically.” It’s more than that, but the nuances are more than Dean needs to know.

“Except that you can’t,” his brother states.

“Right.”

“And Zach?”

Sam nods. “He’s omega, too.”

Dean huffs a laugh. “I knew he was a little girly.”

Sam’s heart plummets down into his stomach. “It—it’s not—that’s—,” he splutters.

“Hey, hey,” Dean soothes, puts a hand on Sam’s knee. “I’m just teasing.”

“It’s not funny,” Sam says, embarrassed that it’s almost a whine. “That’s what they all want me to be, and it’s just—.”

“I know, Sammy.” Dean pats the knee his hand is still resting on and Sam wishes for a fierce moment that Dean would touch him somewhere, anywhere else that wasn’t so brotherly, so platonic. “I know who you are. I know that’s not you.” His hands stays, hot through the denim of Sam’s jeans, and then Dean hastily removes it, takes a sip of his beer. “Although with that long hair,” he continues, and Sam can hear the smirk, “it’s hard to tell sometimes, Samantha.” He laughs at his own joke, and Sam smacks him hard on the shoulder as he stands up.

“Come on, we have to get the apples ready.”

Dean follows him to the kitchen. “So, Reggie?” he prompts, while Sam is digging through a drawer in search of a peeler.

He throws the utensil at Dean’s head, but his brother catches it with a smug grin. “He’s an alpha,” Sam says.

“An alpha male, huh? No surprise there.” Sam snorts. Dean continues. “And he’s trying to uh...mate with you?”

Sam starts washing the apples. “Generally, alphas end up with an omega male or a beta female. It’s like marriage, only a bit more serious because mateships don’t really break up unless something major happens. It’s...a very strong bond. And yes, for reasons I cannot explain because I don’t begin to understand them, Reggie has decided he’s...interested in me. Has been for a couple of years now.” He sets clean apples in front of his brother and moves to get out a cutting board.

“Don’t need help understanding _that_ ,” Dean muses under his breath, like maybe he doesn’t realize Sam can hear him, as he makes quick work of apple skin with the peeler. Before Sam can open his mouth to ask just what the hell that means, Dean quickly goes on. “And you didn’t think that telling him about the whole...pregnancy thing, or lack thereof, might get him to finally leave you the fuck alone?”

Sam sighs. “If people here knew about me, if they realized….If that information got around, people would officially know just how big a freak I really am. At least right now they just think I don’t act right.” The sound of the peeler stops, and Dean’s hand lands on his shoulder, squeezes. Sam enjoys the touch more than he should for a minute, but then he shakes himself, picks up a peeled Granny Smith, cuts it in half, cores it, starts making thin apple slices with his knife. “I know it’s stupid,” he says after a minute, “but I think a part of me liked knowing that at least someone here wanted me around.” It’s more than stupid, it’s weak, and Sam is weak for letting it happen, for even the smallest part of him finding comfort in the fact that he could still be wanted.

“Yeah, he seems to want you for something, anyway,” Dean grumbles. He finishes up the last apple, adds it to the others by Sam’s elbow before he situates himself against the back counter. Sam can feel eyes on the back of his neck. “So uh...why didn’t you take him up on it, huh? Probably would have helped you to be accepted around here if you’d settled down, made yourself a part of the community. Could’ve always pretended you didn’t know about the...no babies thing, when it came up. No one here knows much about turned wolves, right, so it wouldn’t have been that unbelievable.”

Sam tries not to give into the instinct to shrink in on himself. “Dude, you’ve _met_ Reggie, right?”

“Okay yeah, I get that he’s sort of a skeeze now, with the not taking no for an answer thing, but I mean, back when he first approached you.” He pauses to give Sam time to answer, but Sam’s too busy chewing the copper out of the inside of his cheek because he just can’t give his brother an answer to this. Not anything Dean will want to hear. Dean can’t seem to accept that though, rolls right on instead. “It’s just, if fitting in here was that important to you, then I’d think you’d have considered—”

“Because I’m not interested in him, okay? Why does it matter?” Sam’s apple slices are becoming increasingly uneven, but he keeps cutting away to give himself something to do. He can feel the color high on his cheeks and hopes his brother doesn’t notice. Dean is the last person he wants to be having this conversation with.

“Well, Reggie’s not the only, uh...alpha around, right?” Dean presses. “Are you interested in any of them?”

“No,” Sam answers through his teeth.

“Well why not?”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Come on, Sammy,” Dean prods, and Sam’s had about enough of this. He drops the knife and steps jerkily around his brother, out of the kitchen and three steps away into the living room like that much separation between them is gonna make a difference when the smell of Dean is everywhere around him, when every day that his brother stays, it gets harder for Sam to keep his mouth shut and his hands to himself.

“I’m not talking to you about this, Dean,” he reiterates, eyes on the window and back to the kitchen. There’s a sticky residue of apple juice on his fingers and he wipes his hands on his jeans.

He feels more than hears Dean move into the living room with him, and since when did Dean get like this, a dog with a bone and no willingness to just back the fuck off. Dean’s supposed to hate talking about this kind of shit, avoid it just as efficiently as Sam does.

“I’m just wondering why,” Dean says, voice easy and placating but his words still pushing and pushing.

“Yeah well, maybe it’s just none of your business.”

“Hey man, I’m your big brother. I’m pretty sure setting you up is not just my business, it’s my _right_.”

“Was I that easy to get over?”

Sam doesn’t plan to say it. He’s wondered, ever since he left (driven himself crazy with it some nights, the idea of Dean without Sam and back to his old tricks), but especially over these last weeks, over the tension between them that sometimes felt like more but most of the time wasn’t sexual at all. Wondered what Dean had gotten up to in the last four years, who he’d smiled at, who he’d touched. If his nights had ever felt as lonely, as empty, as Sam’s, and who he’d gone to when they had.

Wondered if Dean had missed _them_.

Since he’d come to Blackbeech, Sam had never been willing to settle down, to find a mate and let himself fit a little better into this world, because his mind and his heart both knew he already had one. He’d fallen in love when he was still a child, and despite his faked death and the time and the distance, he’d never been able to let go. He hadn’t moved on, didn’t know that he even could, had barely even wanted to besides. Had resigned himself to a life played out alone, planned to stay in Blackbeech and live like a fringe member of society because he deserved it, deserved to be punished for running, for being too scared of the consequences to face his brother. Better Dean believe him dead than reject him to his face for the monster that he’d become.

Except Dean hadn’t, had stubbornly refused to be horrified. Had found him, had come to Montana, had stayed. It was everything Sam had wanted, every dream that had taunted him with the warmth and comfort he thought he’d never know again. It was torture, to see his brother and smell his brother and feel the heat of his brother on the other side of the mattress and know that what he had done was too unforgivable for Sam to ever deserve that kind of love between them.

No matter how much Sam loved his brother, longed for his brother, he knew he wasn’t worthy of Dean’s love, not anymore. Not ever again.

So the words catch him off guard just as much as they must Dean. The space between them becomes instantly fragile, Sam struggling to take in air that’s gone charged and uneasy, too thin for his lungs. His fists squeeze so tightly at his sides that his knuckles creak and Dean doesn’t say a thing.

“I’m sorry,” Sam chokes out, tries to clear the shakiness out of his throat before he opens his mouth again. “I shouldn’t have—”

“I didn’t,” Dean interrupts, and the tremor Sam can hear in his voice fills all the hollow space in Sam’s chest cavity with something bittersweet and aching.

He lifts his head and turns around, slow now because he can feel the pieces he’s made up of trying to come apart, and Dean’s just where Sam expected, two paces away with hands curled into unhappy fists and eyes somewhere off to the side.

“What?” Sam asks, because this bears repeating.

“Four years, Sam, and I spent every waking minute of it searching for you, every sleeping moment of it—and you think I just, what? Did it out of habit?” Dean’s yelling, shoulders heaving with the effort and hands gesturing angrily, but Sam doesn’t try to stop him. His stupid hormones are trying to push tears up into his eyes and he feels almost nauseous with the way all of his internal organs seem to be floating, lighter than air.

“You always were too loyal for your own good,” Sam says, takes a step forward and gives Dean a watery smile because yes, he’s crying despite himself and Dean better not say a damn word about it.

“Yeah well, lucky for you,” Dean answers drily, but he takes a step forward, too, and now there’s hardly any space left between them at all.

“I didn’t want Reggie,” Sam says, fiercely. “I didn’t want any of them.”

“Sammy,” Dean murmurs, answer to a question Sam didn’t ask, and it’s as soft and hurt and hopeful as the hands Dean puts on his face, thumb dragging to wipe away another tear as it slips down Sam’s cheek.

“Dean,” he breathes, and Dean gives a soft laugh.

“’s weird that you’re taller than me,” his brother says, voice low and intimate in a way that makes Sam’s gut throb. Dean’s lips curl up into a small smile, sweet and boyish, and Sam is hopelessly charmed. “Never kissed anyone taller than me before.”

Sam puts one hand on Dean’s wrist, the other on his chest, feeling the thud of Dean’s heartbeat under his palm. “Maybe now’s a good time to start.”


	7. it's a dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which we finally earn that Explicit rating.

Dean brushes his teeth and spits mint-flavored foam into the basin, watches it swirl down the hideous pink porcelain of the sink in Sam’s vanity. It’s a good thing Sam grew up in a series of ugly no-tells and uglier backwoods bunk holes, or Dean doesn’t know how he’d have stood living the last four years in a house that doesn’t seem to have a single touch of his brother anywhere in it except for the picture on his bedside table. It's the two of them leaning back on the hood of the Impala, Sam just fifteen and starting to grow, tucked up under Dean’s arm and dimples framing his beautiful smile, Dean’s other hand resting at the collar of his shirt. It’s got a crease down the middle from living in Sam’s wallet, but he’s got it framed now, and Dean likes seeing it there, beside the bed they share.

And he’s been seeing it a lot lately, since he’s been lying awake after Sam falls asleep, completely restless and fixated on the rise and fall of Sam’s chest, the flutter of his eyelashes, the pink flash of his tongue between the soft, somnolent part of his lips and—

Dean sighs, splashes water on his face, pats it dry with a towel that he hangs back over the rack because Sam’ll give him shit otherwise.

It’s just...it’s been _weeks_. Weeks since he kissed his baby brother for the very first time since he was twenty and it felt like an unlocking and a settling all at the same time. Weeks of less-than-casual touching, needy make out sessions like they’re sweaty teenagers all over again (and Jesus does Sam sweat now), Sam blushing every time Dean licks his own lips and it’s _driving Dean fucking crazy_.

It’s not like he had a steady diet of sex before he found Sam. Sure there were times when Dean really went off the rails, drinking sprees when all of it—the need, the loss, the confusion, the _waiting—_ became too much for him to handle and he’d take a few days or weeks or (twice, memorably) months to just full on lose his shit, drink all day and deep into the night until his body didn’t even fight it anymore, wake up in a stranger’s bed with his brain bleeding hurt between his eyebrows, or alone in the back of an Impala that smelled like sweat and spunk, jeans around his knees and used condom on the floorboards (sorry, Baby).

But generally, he’d rarely had an interest in anyone else, felt too guilty when he did to do anything about it. With the knowledge that his Sammy, the boy he’d already given his soul away to, had to be ( _had to be_ ) alive out there, he’d never been able to stomach much sober and casual sex.

So he hasn’t exactly been a monk (not like Sam, who’d murmured _I didn’t want any of them_ against his lips, and Dean knows his brother, knows that means nobody’s touched what’s his since that night four years ago when he’d had his baby boy entirely, body and mind and heart, and _fuck_ if that thought alone doesn’t get Dean’s palms sweaty, twist his stomach with possessive need, his barely-touched Sammy, still sweet and ripe and waiting for him)--he hasn’t exactly been a monk, but the last time he’d had sex was months ago, and he’d never even thought to miss it more than anything else he missed about his brother.

Now, though, he’s missing it. He didn’t expect them to fall straight into bed, not when there’s so much bullshit between them, and yeah they’ve been working through it, but Dean’s only got so much tolerance for that kind of touchy feely crap. He’d much rather shove all those dark things back in the box where they belong. Sam’s alive, and Dean mostly gets why he did what he did, even if it’s not what Dean would have done, and isn’t that enough?

Sam’s into him, that much he’s sure of. He’s not the only one crawling out of his brother’s lap with shaky hands and painfully tight jeans. Every time Sam pushes him away, he looks like he’s just agreed to cut his own finger off, and yet it seems like every time Dean attempts to move things a little further than some careful, under-the-shirt groping, Sam’s out from under him and locked in the bathroom before Dean’s head stops spinning.

Dean catches his own reflection in the mirror, shadows under his eyes and day-end stubble on his chin. He’s in his usual bedtime clothing, an undershirt with a few stains the lingering brown-orange of washed-out blood and the boxer briefs he puts on after he showers. Is it him? Is he doing something wrong? Is Sam still hung up on the whole whiny werewolf bullshit, thinking Dean doesn’t want him just because things get a little hairy a few days a month? Because Dean’s not really sure how much more emphatic he can be in demonstrating that he does not give a fuck. Yeah it’s still a little weird in some ways, and maybe it always will be, but he’s had a couple of months now to get used to it and honestly, all he really sees is how human Sam still is at his core. Even when Sam can’t see it himself.

The Dean in the mirror frowns at him, and in a spur of the moment decision, he pulls the shirt over his head, leaves it puddled on the tile floor. He’s maybe not as fit as he was as a happy, hearty teenager, just falling into the sin of his baby brother’s skin, but well. He’s got to try something, damn it.

He flips the light off as he leaves the bathroom, heads into the bedroom across the way. Sam’s already tucked up under the blanket, the thick paperback he’s been reading lately propped up on his stomach. He’s in the long sleeves and pants he’s been wearing to bed ever since they started sharing, which Dean knows has to be killing him because Sam’s internal temperature is well above human now. He looks up with a sweet, dimpled smile when Dean comes in and promptly chokes on whatever words were about to come out of his mouth.

Dean tries not to let his smugness show through. “Been getting kind of warm,” he says, off-hand, which is total crap because it’s started dipping into the 30s at night and he’s pretty sure it’s going to snow soon. Although sleeping with Sam is now like sleeping with an actual, breathing furnace in his bed, so he doesn’t expect Sam to call him out on it.

“Right,” Sam says, a little thready, and his gaze keeps bouncing between his book and Dean crossing over to the bed, like he wants to keep reading but can’t help himself.

Dean stops by his side of the mattress, makes a little show of stretching his arms overhead, swinging them side to side before he slips under the covers. Sam is staring so hard at his book now that he looks like he’s trying to fuse the words directly with his brain, so Dean drops a casual hand in front of the pages, blocking Sam’s view.

“Dean!” and it’s that little brother, obnoxious petulance that almost makes Dean not want to make out with him.

Not quite, but almost.

“Hi,” Dean responds, puts on his best cheeky grin, the one that makes secretaries let him into offices and bartenders cut his tab in half. He slips out the tip of his tongue to wet his bottom lip.

Sam closes the book, drops it on the floor.

Dean scoots closer, and Sam, like a magnet, folds in towards him, one hand reaching out to brush lightly over the skin at Dean’s collarbone, wincing a little when he does it like he didn’t even realize he was moving.

“Hi,” Sam says back, puts a hand more firmly on Dean’s chest. They’re curving together now, trapping heat and air in the narrow space between their bodies, and Sam is staring at Dean’s naked skin and licking his lips. That heavy bass thrum has started up alongside Dean’s pulse again, unable to be ignored and begging him to _take_ , so he leans in, brings their lips together, light, easy kisses at first but quickly ramping up to something hot, sticky, demanding.

The inside of Sam’s mouth is warm, wet, toothpaste sweet and addicting. Dean’s dizzy with it, the slicked friction of tastebuds and the way Sam teases to get Dean’s tongue into his mouth and then licks at it like how is Dean supposed to think of anything other than Sam doing that to his dick? Sam’s got those big hands on him, running over and over his bare skin, not even tentative about it, and when one ghosts below the fold his armpit, he groans. Sam catches his lip in a bite that’s almost ungentle, swirls his tongue over the twinge, and Dean can’t help it, the way he wants, that dirty urge to crawl inside of his brother’s body that makes him start pressing Sam back into the mattress, shifting his weight to roll over on top of him and—

The hands on his chest become a little stone wall as Sam pulls back, puts a little distance between them. Dean makes a noise of protest at the loss, keeps staring down at the tender pink wetness of his brother’s mouth as Sam gasps, “Wait, wait—”

“Please,” Dean says, because really at this point, he’s past shame. He just _wants_. “Please, Sammy.” He slides his gaze up to Sam’s, sees heat and fear in those blown black eyes, feels his stomach sink just a little. “We don’t have to—just let me touch you, baby, lemme get my hands on you, gonna make you feel so good, I swear it.” He catches up one of Sam’s hands with his own, presses wet kisses down the back of it. “Don’t gotta be scared of me, Sammy,” he mutters, and it comes out less heated and a little more honest, because Dean can’t stand his little brother, his baby boy, looking at him that way, like he doesn’t trust Dean not to hurt him.

Sam eases them back onto their sides, still not much air between them, and Dean swears he can smell the spit Sam licks nervously over his lips. “It’s not that,” Sam says softly, eyes down on the fingernails he’s settled around Dean’s sternum, little lines of pressure like a loose cage over the beat of Dean’s heart, like Sam wants to hold everything that’s under his hand. Like Sam still doesn’t know he already does. “It’s not—not you that I’m….”

“Is it the—?” Dean clears his throat. “I don’t care that you’re, you know, a werewolf. You know that, right? I mean, it doesn’t change how I feel about...about anything.”

“I know,” Sam says, hint of a smile touching right at the edge of his mouth, and he looks so _young_ and Dean wants to hold him and shield him and fucking _break_ him at the same time, find out what’s underneath all that control. Sam’s eyes drop down again, shy and sweet, and he tells Dean back up through his lashes, “I do want you, want to—. It’s just...I haven’t really, um. I haven’t done any sort of, well, sex. With anyone, since I—since I changed.” He looks up at Dean firmly now, imploringly. “You don’t know what it’s like. My—my body, it does things, it _feels_ things, and it’s all so different. And I don’t know—I don’t know what it’s gonna be like. Sex is a big part of...of being this _thing_ , and I just—I just don’t know.”

Dean feels immediately relieved and then immediately guilty, because Sam’s all worked up and Dean shouldn’t be thinking about Sam saying _I do want you_ and the level of personal satisfaction those words give him after weeks of uncertainty. So he shoves the mess of his own feelings away for the moment, focuses on his little brother with the nervous eyes. Dean shifts Sam’s hand in his, ladders their fingers, presses them against his own jaw. “Okay,” he says. “I can understand that, but you’re never going to _know_ unless you actually...try it out.” He lets Sam’s hand slip out of his, cups his palm over the too-hot line of Sam’s body, slides down until he can rub his thumb over the jut of Sam’s hip. “Gotta take this new body for a test drive, you know what I’m saying?”

Sam lets out a little laugh, smiles soft in the lamplight, rolls his eyes a little and Dean feels the way his heart strains to leave the trap of his bones. Fuck, Sam better never realize what a fucking girl he is. “I’m not a car, Dean,” Sam hmphs, but the hand against Dean’s chest starts rubbing warm little circles against his skin.

“’s’okay,” Dean says, “I can still handle you just fine.” He winks, and Sam laughs out right, and Dean leans it to kiss it off his mouth.

He draws back a minute later. “We’ll go easy, hm? You tell me if you wanna slow things down, wanna stop. But for now,” he kisses up the line of Sam’s jaw, growls low into his baby brother’s ear, “why don’t you tell me what you want me to do?”

Dean feels Sam’s electric shock shiver, and the “Fuck me” that groans past his lips seems just as involuntary until Sam repeats it as Dean works his teeth lightly down the line of Sam’s neck. “Fuck me, Dean,” Sam says, tone heavy and sincere, then gasps as Dean’s teeth sink in above his pulse, a little slip of control because Dean wasn’t expecting that kind of eagerness, thought they’d start with a little rubbing each other off before they progressed to the big time, but fuck if he isn’t on board, has been since day one. Memories of baby brother heat and skin have kept him up at night for four years; he’s ready to make them not just memories anymore.

He doesn’t ask if Sam’s sure because he trusts his brother, but he looks back up, square into Sam’s heated gaze and says, “Tell me if you want me to stop,” because he doesn’t trust himself, not with the tension that’s started to thrum low in his gut already, the way his hands itch with the need to feel every inch of Sam, inside and out.

Their lives have always been rough, and there used to be nothing Dean hated more than seeing a bruise on Sam he hadn’t put there, used to bite and suck and pinch and press until every last one of them had a big brother twin— _Property of Dean Winchester, not to be fucked with._ He wants that, all over again, wants everyone here in this Podunk town to know who Sam belongs to, these bastards who don’t know how good they’ve had it, four years of his sweet Sammy in their lives. His hands squeeze reflexively at the warm skin under them, that urge to own almost consuming him for just a moment as his mind seems to finally realize what Sam is offering him.

Dean wants, wants with the shuddering fierceness that can only come from years of denial and hope, but even more than that, he wants Sam happy, writhing and needy under his touch. Whatever happens, they’ll have plenty of time now together to satisfy Dean’s uglier desires. So for now, he’ll keep it slow.

He kisses his way back up to Sam’s mouth, and Sam seems more eager now that they’ve talked, holding himself back a little less. He keeps making these sweet, breathy sounds that Dean can’t get enough of, swallows down into his core with Sam’s spit. It’s easy to get lost in, Sam’s mouth, Sam’s hands on his face and running easy over his skin, and he wants to stay here for hours, relearning the things he already knows by heart—Sam’s taste, the wet of Sam’s tongue, the ridges of Sam’s teeth, the soft give of Sam’s lip when Dean sucks it into his mouth. He slips greedy hands under the wornsoft cotton of Sam’s sleep shirt, and Sam moans into his mouth as he strokes at hot skin, feels the graceful arch of ribs and all that lean muscle definition, hands stuttering over Sam’s breastbone when Sam gets a grip on his ass and pulls their bodies tight together.

 _Right_.

Dean pulls himself away, keeps his eyes on the sheen of spit he's left behind on Sam's lips as he tugs Sam’s shirt off, tosses it away, backs off to awkwardly knee his way out of his boxers. Sam takes the hint and squirms his way out of his sleep pants, and then he’s stretching back out on the mattress, completely bare for Dean’s eyes. He’s blushing and averting his eyes, one arm up beside his face like he wants to hide in it, and Dean should say something consoling, something factual about how sexy his brother is, but his throat is tight and his vocabulary is gone because Sam is indescribable. His shy smile at the stupid fucking look that must be on Dean’s face; that warm skin that’s paler where his t-shirt hides it; those long, long legs that are thin and strong all at once; the hair on his chest and sneaking down his torso to fan out around his cock.

And Sam’s cock is just pretty, okay. Dean doesn’t like to get sentimental, but it’s the nicest one he’s ever seen, and he really just kind of wants it in his mouth regardless of what Sam asked for. Or in addition to. Sam’s still holding himself back, shy of his own reactions, and Dean thinks maybe a little blow job is just the thing to loosen him up, make him forget about anything that’s not them, together. Because Dean just wants _Sam_ , every piece of him, and he remembers with that alonetime-in-the-shower kind of fondness how uninhibited his baby brother used to be in bed, the ridiculously gorgeous noises he’d make and the sheer wildness of him that made Dean’s dick drip messy just for seeing it. And maybe Sam is a little different now, that’s okay too, but Dean knows, with all his big-brother-knows-best sensibility, that somewhere under Sam’s layers of modification and enforced self-control, there’s still something wantonly dirty hiding out.

He knee-walks himself in closer to Sam’s body, and Sam’s legs spread in a way that seems almost unconscious to let Dean between them. He leans in, hovers to nip at Sam’s mouth again and then lingers for a long moment when Sam makes a noise of complaint before he pulls away. He works his way back down Sam’s neck, licking at the saltsweat taste of him, stops to bite at a nipple in a way that makes Sam cry out loudly before he keeps going, licks around Sam’s bellybutton as he rubs his thumbs into the creases at the tops of Sam’s thighs, digging firmly down into the muscle. Sam’s legs twitch in involuntary response, and he gasps, body trying to shift away like it's a little unsure of the sensation, so Dean eases up and pets over the deceptively soft skin there until Sam is lax and almost purring. He slides his thumbs up and over the thin stretch of skin at Sam’s hip points, watches the trail of goosebumps that spring up in his wake. The way Sam is put together, all hardness and softness, strength and secret fragility, fascinates Dean to no end. He could know every detail of it and still want to learn it all over again.

Finally, he drags his tongue across heated skin, down into the valley of Sam’s inner thighs, and Sam’s body shifts around without dislodging him, like Sam’s thinking about all the places Dean’s mouth could be but doesn’t really want him to move on. Dean flickers his tongue over the sensitive skin, high enough up on Sam’s leg that it’s a total tease.

Sam lets out a harsh breath above him. “God that’s so—.”

“Hmm?” Dean mumbles, a questioning hum against Sam’s skin as he drags his lips in wet, open-mouthed kisses now across Sam’s inner thigh, feels the jump and shudder of Sam’s muscles where his hand is wrapped around the tree trunk of Sam’s leg to force his brother a little wider, expose that pale, soft, secret skin that no one but Sam or Dean has looked at or touched more and more, slowly and carefully so that maybe Sam doesn’t even know his legs want to fall open, willing, like the pages of a book.

“It’s so _much_ ,” Sam says, voice tight and thigh muscle continuing to dance under the deliberate ministrations of Dean’s mouth. The air down here in the hidden places of his brother’s body is hot, damp, musky, makes the spit pool on Dean’s tongue. He puts his teeth on the skin under his mouth, worries it gently and then bites down, harder than he ought to and not as hard as he wants to, and Sam’s yelp of surprise melts into a drawn out moan, “ _oh. God,_ ” that has Dean reaching down with the hand that’s not occupied keeping Sam’s leg open for his teeth, palming roughly over the head of his own dick, a blunt burst of sensation that temporarily appeases the insistent want searing like battery acid under his skin.

“Taste so good, Sammy,” he says, lays four more neat bites right up the taut line of muscle until Sam’s balls are pressing against his cheek and Sam is begging, “Please,” in a voice that’s choked with attempted control. Dean finally, reluctantly leaves the soft, sweet skin of Sam’s thigh in peace, starts kissing around the base of his cock instead, Sam’s pubes tickling at his nose in a way that he ignores.

“Dean, I want—I want,” Sam starts, but Dean just looks up, puts a finger over his lips and shushes his brother, then licks his way across the head of Sam’s cock.

Sam almost comes off the bed.

“So responsive, aren’t you?” Dean smiles, looking up at Sam’s flushed face, that cock a hot brand against his cheek.

“I hate you,” Sam answers, a little pathetically.

“Now, now,” Dean starts dropping those open-mouthed kisses all down the line of Sam’s dick, “that’s not very nice.”

“Dean!”

“Besides,” he continues, keeps his tone admonishing, “I like it.” He rolls the heel of his hand against the base of Sam’s dick so that it flattens against the hot skin of Sam’s stomach, curls over Sam’s body to swirl his tongue over and over the vein, Sam's circumcision scar, that sensitive spot just below the head until Sam is shaking underneath him, grabbing uselessly at hair too short for his fingers. Dean finally relents, looks back up into Sam’s wet eyes and breathes hot over the hardness against his chin. “I really fucking like it, Sammy.”

And then, because Dean’s a nice guy, he grips a hand firmly around the base of Sam’s dick and slips it between his lips. The little noises Sam makes when he starts to lick around it again (this time along with the wet suck of his mouth) trip down his own spine to spike his arousal ever higher. He pulls back a little to swallow, notices that Sam’s precome is still salty like he’d expect, but also sweet on his tongue, and he sucks at just the head to get another burst of it. God, it’s weirdly good, just another thing about Sam to be addicted to, and he coaxes more of it onto the back of his tongue as he slides Sam’s cock deeper, two fingers angling it just right to slip back towards Dean’s throat. The stretch at the corners of his mouth is noticeable now, and Dean relishes the feeling. Sam’s always been big, seems to just keep getting bigger, and Dean wants to take the time to learn every inch of that gorgeous body, that gorgeous dick, with his tongue.

He keeps things simple, because blow jobs have never needed to be fancy to be good, and enjoys the signs of Sam starting to fall apart around him. _Because_ of him, because of _Dean_ , and it’s fucking sexy in ways Dean’s never experienced before, hearing the helpless sounds slipping out of Sam’s mouth, feeling the pressure of Sam’s hands on his shoulders. Sam starts trying to fuck up into Dean’s throat, aborted little chops of his hips and Dean relaxes as much as he can to take it, keeps working Sam over until he can feel Sam's dick start to swell up against his tongue and he realizes that he actually, _really_ has to stop if he’s going to give Sam what he asked for tonight.

Dean’s heard a lot of things die in his lifetime, and the noise Sam makes when he pulls off is something similar, those huge hands falling back against the mattress and groping at empty air when Dean shakes them off his shoulders, gets back up onto his knees.

“Gonna fuck you now, okay?” he asks, and Sam locks eyes with him, lets out a shuddering breath and nods.

“You got lube?” Dean continues. He does, somewhere in the trunk of the car, but they’re both warm and naked and deliciously sweaty and he’s not the least bit interested in going out in the cold.

Sam flushes noticeably, which Dean tactfully doesn’t point out because he knows how much his brother hates everything about the way his body reacts to things, and throws an arm over his eyes. After a minute, he peeks out underneath. “I don’t need it,” he mumbles. Dean must give him a look that conveys the confusion he’s feeling, because Sam sighs and gestures vaguely in the direction of his own crotch with his free hand. “Just—,” and that’s all the help he’s apparently giving, so Dean slips a hand between his baby brother’s asscheeks, rubs a careful thumb over Sam’s hole, which is decidedly not as dry as he was expecting.

“Are you...wet?” Dean asks, carefully keeps his tone something mild, and when Sam gives an embarrassed little duck of his head, it’s like someone slipped hot rocks right down into Dean’s guts, the weight of his arousal sudden and fierce. He presses at the opening, and it gives slightly under his thumb, muscle still tight but more relaxed than he’s used to. “Fuck,” he murmurs, presses harder, feels sucking pressure on the pad of his thumb as Sam’s body tries to pull it inside. “ _Fuck_ , Sam, I didn’t think you could get any hotter.” Sam lets out a small, shaky laugh that Dean feels good about, but he’s more focused on the curiosity burning him up inside.

He takes his thumb away, feels another molten slip of lust deep down in his belly at the lost little whimper Sam probably doesn’t even know he makes, slips both his hands around the back of Sam’s thighs and pushes them all the way up until Sam’s exposed, squirming in a way that can’t hide the needy flutter of his hungry hole under Dean’s gaze and Jesus fucking Christ, Dean is gonna die here. Not that he’d say it in so many words, but he’s always been maybe a little obsessed with his brother’s asshole, used to run his fingers over and over it when he sucked on Sam’s teenage boy dick, tuck a hand under Sam’s jeans when Dad slept in the backseat and press in as close he could, thought he might cry the day Sam let him slip that first finger inside. Pink, pretty, opening up for him and nobody else, and now look, it fucking wants him inside just as bad as he’s always wanted it.

He presses his thumb back in, lets it sink a little deeper, and Sam makes a plaintive noise that finally catches his attention. He looks back up into Sam’s blushing face, grudgingly lets Sam’s legs fall into a more comfortable sprawl around his body.

“You don’t mind?” Sam asks, shy and sweet and like he’s sixteen all over again.

“Fuck no,” Dean says, slips his fingers along the tender skin of Sam’s crack and watches Sam’s eyelids flutter in response. “’s sexy as hell, Sam. God, you getting like this, all for me? Hot and ready for your big brother, hm?” And Sam nods, makes a choked off little noise when Dean's thumb strokes over his hole again. “Fuck, you’re sensitive back there, too, aren’t you?” Sam bites his lip as he nods again, looks a little mortified and a whole lot turned on, and the noise he makes when Dean slips that thumb into his mouth for a taste is barely human.

It’s not at all like pussy, which Dean admits is the taste his brain was expecting, but it’s definitely not bad, just different and that same slightly odd, vague sweetness of Sam’s precome. He swirls his tongue around his thumb contemplatively, watching his brother’s gaze grow dark and hungry all over again.

Dean slips his hand back between his brother’s legs with more intent, fingers over that soft, hot opening. “Never gonna be able to pretend you don’t want me, baby,” Dean smirks, cuts off whatever Sam is about to say in response by pressing his index finger right on into Sam’s hole, because Sam can be four years different and in some ways a whole new person, but Dean’s still pretty good at knowing how to shut him up.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Sam groans, with feeling, and Dean grins, kisses the inside of his baby brother’s knee as he slides his finger in deeper. He hasn’t done this, fingering guys open, all that much, but the difference between Sam and a regular person is obvious. Still not like a chick, but smooth, so hot on his fingers that it’s unimaginable what it’ll feel like on his dick. The muscle is relaxed, giving to the insistent invasion of his touch with hardly any work on his part, flexing under the stroke of his finger as he starts to fuck it in and out, slow and easy. And Sam is definitely not feeling any pain.

“Openin’ up like a dream,” Dean murmurs, drags his head down the sweat sticky skin of Sam’s thigh, close to his working hand like that natural glisten is magnetic, like he can’t help himself, and he slips his tongue out and slicks it along the sucking line where his finger disappears.

“Dean!” Sam sounds a little like he’s crying, and Dean feels wicked, powerful, consumed. He backs his index finger all the way out and lines up his middle next to it, presses them both back in with a steady, even pressure. The give isn’t quite so easy this time, friction starting to build up with the stretch as that incredible heat bares back down against him. He presses his fingers outward against the squeeze, flutters just the tip of his tongue into the tiny space he manages to create, and Sam groans like the dead.

He backs off, returns to his place against Sam’s knee and watches every flicker of his brother’s features as he slowly tries to work Sam’s hole open. Sam watches back, eyes going wide when Dean finds that spot inside him, starts passing over it with deliberate pressure and swiftness while he scissors his fingers wide, and then his brother is slowly, steadily losing it under Dean’s gaze. It’s fucking beautiful to witness, Sam giving over to himself, slipping from self consciousness into a sweat-slippery, needful thing. Dean doesn’t know how much of it’s the wolf, how much of it’s just _Sam_ , dirty and downright slutty with wanting it. Dean doesn’t fucking care.

He keeps at it, but after what feels like hours of burning heat and slick muscle and ignoring the hollow, aching pit inside him that wants to _taketaketake_ , Dean sits back a little. “It’s not enough,” Dean says reluctantly. Sam’s wet and getting wetter, but Dean remembers the first time they did this, a veritable puddle of lube dripping out of Sam onto his palm before he was convinced he wouldn’t hurt his brother. He wants this, he wants this _bad_ , but he needs it to be just as good for Sammy as it’s going to be for him.

Sam rolls his head on the pillow, somewhere between shaking it no and writhing against the pillow. “Want it,” he gasps, lets go of the grip he has on the sheets to grab at the hand Dean’s left resting on his stomach. He squeezes, _hard_ , tugs like he wants to draw Dean up, wants Dean with that same maddening insistence that’s buzzing under Dean’s own skin. “I need it,” he demands. “Need to feel it, okay, need it, Dean, _need you_.” He pulls until Dean moves forward, puts Dean's hand on his face, presses his jaw into the cup of Dean’s palm. “Now.”

Dean’s body is already sliding into place, Sam’s thighs coming up to cradle him like he’s something to be taken care of. “Are you sure?” he asks, one more time, because this, this is a lot. This is everything.

“ _Now_ , Dean,” Sam growls, and Dean reaches down between them, grips himself between thumb and forefinger, lines himself up, pushpushpushes against the resistance until Sam’s body gives, slick and sudden, and the head of Dean’s cock is encased in heat so searing that it _hurts_.

“Fuck, Sam,” he pants, arms shaking where they’re planted on the mattress, holding him up. “Knew you ran hot but— _fuck_ ,” this time because his brother is rocking underneath him, trying to get Dean further up inside him but mostly just grinding at the sensitive head of Dean’s dick with that unbelievable warmth and the catch of not quite enough slick. “Jesus,” Dean groans out, and then he sucks it up, pushes past the overload in sensation to give Sammy what he needs.

He works in slow, as slowly as Sam will let him with his calves around Dean’s back trying to squeeze their bodies together, but Dean’s moving against the friction drag inside Sam’s body and between that and the heat, it’s near painful. There’s a moment, a perfect feeling of unity, of belonging, when he seats himself all the way in, eyes locked with Sam’s, their chests rising and falling together with their breathing, and then Dean’s rolling his hips, Sam’s eyes are rolling back in his head, and Dean is fucking his baby brother in earnest, too far gone to hold back. “Fuck yes,” Sam says, and it sounds like begging, and Dean gets a hand on Sam’s face, drags him up close and crushes their mouths into a kiss, Sam as open and heated and wet for his tongue as the grip of the most secret spaces of his brother’s body are for his cock.

Eventually, he lets Sam go, focuses solely on the work of their hips, bends Sam nearly in half as he grinds himself in deeper. Sam is something like incoherent beneath him, eyes open and wild, sounds slipping out of his mouth every time Dean punches up against his prostate that Dean will never, ever tell him are bordering on yips of pleasure. He’s flushed and sweaty and incredibly, stunningly gorgeous, and Dean’s heart is choking in his throat and beating bloody in his cock. Sweat drips off his body down onto Sam’s skin but his brother doesn’t seem to notice, clinging tight and arching his back to meet Dean every time he thrusts back in, increasingly rough as Sam urges him on. He wants to get a hand between their bodies, help Sam along, but it’s too much, he’s barely keeping himself together as it is.

“Dean,” Sam gasps. “Dean, Dean, Dean,” to the rhythm of their bodies, like it’s the only word he knows, and the hands gripped around Dean’s shoulders claw into him, sharp, burning points of pain that make him shudder, ground him and overwhelm his senses at the same time. Sam throws his head back against the pillow, eyes open and really, actually fucking _glowing_ in the lamplight, and he whimpers something, so sloppy on his tongue that Dean can’t understand it, and comes between their bodies, the wet of it somehow hotter than Sam's skin as his body squeezes tight around Dean's cock and Dean has never felt anything like this before, has never even imagined something like this could exist. He’s drowning in wet and need and the smell of baby brother come and he’s never coming up for air again.

He presses his face to Sam’s, cheek to sweaty cheek, turns his head so he’s mouthing at Sam’s lips, and Sam has barely relaxed at all, still moving his body with Dean’s increasingly frantic, uncoordinated thrusts, and finally, finally, that heat, that _hunger_ that’s been rising under his skin like electricity, coalesces, pulls him under, a wave of unforgiving, perfect pleasure that sweeps him up until he’s gone, burned up, empty body and his soul somewhere up near the thermosphere until he falls right back down into his own existence, shaking and sweating and grasping at his brother’s body like it’s creating gravity just for the two of them.

“Wow,” Dean says, stupidly, where his face is now pressed into his brother’s neck. Sam shivers at the tickle of his breath, and Dean can’t help the smile that crawls onto his face as he eases himself up, lifting onto arms that have gone weak in the afterglow.

The wetness on Sam’s face, though, definitely tears and not sweat, shocks him. “Wha—di-did I hurt you?” he asks, pulls far enough away to run his hands over Sam’s shoulders, chest, arms like this is a post-hunt pat down and he can find where Sam’s wounded. One hand slips down to the place where they’re still joined, fingers over the stretch of Sam’s rim around him, makes Sam hiss.

“No, no,” Sam says, shakes his head with a little hitch of his breath. “That was—this is good. It’s so _good_.” And the spreading smile on his face is too genuine to be faked. Dean’s heart relaxes.

“Yeah?” he asks, and Sam nods, smiles wider.

“Yeah,” he promises, shivers again when Dean leans in to kiss salt and water off his lips.

It’s moments later when Dean eases away, dick so soft it’s about to slip out of its own accord, and they settle into the damp, hopeless mess of the sheets, legs tangled, Sam’s hand splayed warm over the thump of Dean’s heartbeat, their breath mingling because they’re too close on the pillow. Dean doesn’t mind a little post-coital cuddle, and Sam seems a little clingy right now, so they stay that way for long, drowsy minutes as Dean’s eyelids grow heavy and the absent thought that he should get up, clean them both off, slips further and further from his mind.

“I want to leave,” Sam says into the quiet, and Dean rouses.

“What?”

“I want to leave,” Sam repeats, eyes a dark, ocean blue in the low light. “Blackbeech. I don’t want to stay here anymore.”

“Really?” Dean asks. “I mean, but what about your life here?”

Sam gives a soft little laugh that ghosts across Dean’s lips. “I think my life has just been waiting for you to find me.”

Dean feels inexplicably peaceful and sad. “Okay,” he says. “We’ll go.”


	8. real world waiting

Once Sam finally tells Dean he wants to leave, it’s like a weight is lifted off his chest. It’s intimidating in a way, leaving Blackbeech, re-entering human society when he’s been living in the isolation of other werewolves for so long. He knows he doesn’t belong in this world, but he’s not really sure he belongs in that other one either. And he knows he’s going to miss Zach and Patsy and Bill. But being ostracized by the others, never really feeling comfortable, much less happy, the hollow longing of knowing Dean would never find him, would never stay if he did—yeah, not so much.

Since Sam’s brief stint at Truman High back in ‘97, a part of him has longed for a home, for stability. Except once all of that had been given to him—a town and a house and neighbors who knew his name—he realized it didn’t mean much of anything without his brother. The people of Blackbeech have been unkind to him, but if Sam’s being honest with himself, they could have been the warmest and most accepting bunch of strangers in the whole country, welcomed him in as family and taken care of him for the last four years, and it wouldn’t have mattered.

It will always feel more right to be with Dean.

Dean. _His_ Dean. Sam has fucked up so many times, and Dean is still here. Dean is still, improbably, impossibly choosing him, still willing to give Sam everything, to help Sam find a happiness he didn’t know he could feel anymore. Maybe it’s just the contrast between his life before Dean found him and his life now, but he’s not sure he’s ever been this happy.

If only the wolf in him could just buy into the fact that the rest of Sam is more than satisfied. It’s known all along that Dean equals mate, but Dean’s not a wolf, and it will never be completely content without that bond. There will always be a hollow place inside of Sam, an emptiness waiting to be filled, and not in a way that can be satisfied by being full of Dean’s dick (he knows, he’s been trying to fill it _a lot_ ). It was almost easier in a way when he thought there was no chance of them being together again, when he kept any thought of _mate_ locked down so tightly in his mind that it only ever slipped out in his dreams. It's been harder, in the weeks since they finally got together, in the times that they're so entwined Sam doesn't know where he ends and the wolf begins and neither of them want to let Dean go. But part of that is just the newness of it all. The pain of losing Dean four years ago had been acute, made even more intense by his fear and confusion and self-loathing, but it had eased somewhat with time. This ache will ease, too.

And he’s _happy_ like this. He doesn’t see any need to rock the boat. He doesn’t even know for certain that things with Dean would be, _could_ be, any better if Dean changed. Yes, their bond would be stronger, Sam would feel _whole_ in a way he doesn’t understand but knows is missing. Zach says it’s intangible, the things that change, impossible to explain but life-changing all the same. But the fact is, Sam doesn’t _need_ those things. He doesn’t even want to ask for them, could never, ever ask his brother to undergo what Sam was forced into without a say. He has more than enough already. Dean gives him so much.

And God, what if Dean turned into an omega, too? (He wouldn't, Sam's heart tells him, because they're made to be together, they're made to _fit_ , but Sam's heart is an idiot sometimes and he's learned when to ignore it.)

It doesn’t mean it’s not a little painful though, makes that hollow place feel new and raw all over again, when he sees mated couples, knowing that he’ll never have that connection, that he’ll outlive his brother by years even if Dean makes it to the kind of old age that’s highly unlikely for a hunter, that Sam will die lost and alone. Not having to deal with those feelings distracting him from what his mind knows, that he’s perfectly content just like this—it isn’t even close to the biggest reason he wants to leave Blackbeech, but it’s definitely a side benefit.

He’s happy, and he doesn’t need the world around him trying to make him think he’s not.

Sam tells Patsy that he’s leaving a few days after he tells Dean he wants to go. He sits her down at a booth with her own mug of coffee while Dean watches from across the restaurant, puts his big hands over her liver-spotted ones. They feel so small under his, and he wonders again at how she was able to take care of him, stand up for him for all of these years. He breaks it to her gently, and she answers like she already knew. Maybe she did, has known since Dean showed up months ago to rescue him. A few minutes later she gets up, and he sees her brushing at her eyes as she passes through the swinging door into the kitchen. Dean gives him a minute before he wanders over, slips into the bench seat Patsy vacated.

“You okay?” he asks, and Sam shrugs, keeps his eyes on the straw wrapper he’s toying with on the Formica tabletop.

“It wasn’t all bad here, I guess,” Sam says by way of response, and he feels Dean’s nod even though he doesn’t see it. Dean reaches out, runs his fingers lightly down the back of Sam’s hand. They’re not overtly affectionate in public, because everyone here still knows them as brothers and maybe a little because neither of them have any idea how to be like that anyway, but no one’s watching them. The touch catches Sam off guard, and he looks up quickly, a warm little smile blooming on his face. This is right. They're gonna be just fine.

He's gonna be just fine.

Tuesday a week later, they’re back at Patsy’s (they’ve been going every day, a promise Patsy extracted from him in a moment of guilt). It’s lunchtime, but they’re both eating breakfast food, plates overflowing to the point that Sam suspects Patsy is doing her best to fatten both of them up while she still has the chance.

“So uh,” Dean starts awkwardly, poking at the omelet on his plate that’s so stuffed with bacon it looks like it might pop at any moment, “when we leave, what do you wanna, you know…do, exactly?”

Sam looks up from his own plate. “What do you mean?”

Dean shrugs. “Well, where do you wanna go from here?”

It’s Sam’s turn to shrug, take a bite of his steak and eggs, chew, swallow. “I just assumed we’d just go back to, you know, the family business.” He’s still very careful talking about hunting here, though he’s not sure why anymore beyond a reflexive habit.

“Just go back?” Dean presses. “You realize it’s been a while since either of us, you know, did _that_.” He near-whispers the last word, leaning in closer over the table.

“Worried you’re a little rusty, hm?” Sam smirks. “Don’t worry, baby, I’ll take good care of you out there.”

“Shut up.”

Sam chuckles a little, shakes his head at himself. “Really,” he goes on, “I’m sort of pretty...good at that sort of thing now, and I may have spent the last few years focused on werewolves, but I probably know as much lore as D—as anyone at this point.” He smiles flatly to cover the awkwardness of the slip, because if there’s one thing they really never talk about, it’s their father. They seem to have silently agreed that the best time to deal with the Dad issue is approximately never. “Besides,” Sam continues, “I know you put everything on hold when I disappeared, but you miss it, don’t you?”

He doesn’t wait for Dean to respond, doesn’t need to. “I think I do, too,” Sam says quietly, thumbs at the handle of his coffee mug. “I think I want it, helping people again.” He doesn’t say it, can’t say it to Dean, but Sam _needs_ this, needs to know that he can still do good things, the _right_ things, even if he is a monster.

“Okay,” Dean says, and Sam shakes himself out of his reverie.

They both go back to their breakfasts, but Sam feels a little subdued as they finish eating, wander their way back to the little house on the edge of town, where he lets Dean make him forget his melancholy the very best way he knows how.

“Saturday,” Sam pants out, when they’re both breathless and naked and Dean’s stretched over Sam’s back with his dick so deep in the slick heat of Sam’s ass that he’s not sure Dean’s ever gonna make it back out again. Sam sure as fuck doesn’t want him to.

“Huh?”

“We’ll leave Sa—Saturday.” Sam groans, shudders as Dean licks across his back.

“Sure, fine, whatever,” Dean agrees, bites down with a flare of white-hot pain into Sam’s shoulder, gnaws there like he can brand Sam permanently and snaps his hips punishingly and “ _Fuck_ ,” Sam hisses, lets himself go, sinks down into the shaking, sweaty, animal thing he’d only ever let Dean reduce him to.

 

{***}

 

Dean’s ready to leave Blackbeech pretty much as soon as Sam mentions the idea. He has no ties here besides his brother—shit, he’d only emptied his duffel at all because Sam kept putting his clean clothes in the dresser drawers after washing them, hanging them to dry on the line in his backyard like this is Little House on the fucking Praire. But Sam has some things to tie up, people to talk to, and he seems pretty eager to leave but Dean can still sense his hesitance. Dean gets it, so he doesn’t push, lets Sam take things at his own pace, makes his own moves in the background to get them ready to go. Sam’s old backpack is still in the car, but it’s misshapen from being squashed into the trunk for four years, straps peeling with age, so he runs out to a military surplus not too far away one day while Sam is at work, picks him up a new one in Army green. He leaves it casually on the kitchen counter, pretends he’s watching TV when Sam sees it, carefully runs his hands over the fabric. “Just figured you could use it,” Dean answers, when Sam asks him about it half an hour later while they’re elbow-to-elbow in the kitchen, and Sam smiles down at his floury hands.

The Thursday before they’re set to leave, Dean’s at the hardware store, which is the only place to get auto parts in this town. Zach had been nice enough to order in a new filter for him, and he grabs a few quarts of oil, wants to give his baby a full tune up before they hit the road since she’s been waiting idly for so long. Zach’s chatting with him over the counter in that disarmingly friendly way of his, and Dean can’t help but notice that he’s being a lot nicer than Patsy or Bill, who both seem to hold at least a little resentment that Dean is taking their boy away.

“So Sam says you guys are just going to drive around the states for a while, like you did when you were kids,” Zach says, putting Dean’s items into a cloth bag. Sam would say that, since he keeps their history as hunters effectively secret here. “That sounds so great! Maybe one day I’ll convince Mike to take me on a trip like that, really see the sites, you know? Blackbeech is great and all, but I’d love to go to Yellowstone or something.”

“You seem to be taking this better than Patsy,” Dean blurts out as Zach pushes the bag towards him.

“Oh, she’s just sad her little bird is leaving the nest,” Zach replies, waving a careless hand. “Besides, I know you guys have to come back soon enough.”

“We do?” Dean asks, puts his hands on the bag but doesn’t take it yet. Sam hasn’t mentioned anything about coming back, and overall Dean’s gotten the impression that he’s completely done with this place.

“Well yeah, when you turn. I mean, Sam can’t do it because—”

“Wait, what? We’re not—I’m not _turning_.” Jesus, what would have given the guy that idea? He’s pretty much fine with Sam’s being a werewolf at this point (and if Sam would just get over it and let Dean see him changed then Dean could probably get rid of his niggling hangups about the whole thing), but Dean? It’s never crossed his mind, never even come up in conversation. Why would it?

“Oh,” Zach says, flushing a very delicate pink up to the line of his dark hair. “Oh, I’m sorry, I just thought—well, nevermind. I didn’t mean to—it’s just, what about your, you know...your mateship?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Dean says, probably a little more aggressively than Zach deserves but seriously, he has no idea what the fuck is going on.

Zach leans forward over the counter, voice low and conspiratorial. “It’s okay,” he says gently, “I know about you guys. Sam told me.” Oh, Zach thinks Dean’s pissed because of the relationship he was implying between them. “It’s not that common with us,” Zach continues, “but it does happen sometimes, with brothers.”

“No,” Dean says, because he sort of got over that whole brothers thing about three minutes after the first time they’d fooled around (okay, maybe three months, but who’s counting), and he’s never really put too much stake in what anyone outside of the family might think about it. “Why would I turn? What the hell is a ‘mateship’?”

“Oh you know,” Zach starts, voice casual but tone cautious, “werewolves, life mates, all that stuff.” He gives a fake little laugh, leaning away from Dean and looking more uncomfortable by the second. “Sam hasn’t...hasn’t talked to you about any of this?”

Dean resists the urge to grind his teeth. “Obviously not,” he almost snarls. He’s overreacting, has been this whole time and he knows it, but he can’t seem to stop himself. It’s the way Zach’s looking at him, somewhere between pity and like he’s done something wrong, the way it’s clear that whatever Zach’s talking about, it’s serious. Something so serious that Sam should have told him about it by now. Because yes, Sam had mentioned mates during their discussions about Reggie, but he’d never brought it up in the context of _them_.

He’d thought, he’d really believed, that he and Sam were past all of this—the lying, the hiding things. He may not like it, but he knows that people, even Sam, are always gonna have their secrets. Fine, whatever. But after everything Dean has been through to find his brother, Sam’s not supposed to lie about the big stuff. Not anymore.

Looks like Dean was wrong.

 

{***}

 

Sam leaves Bill’s office, gives a small wave to Cheryl, who doesn’t return the gesture, just watches from her place behind the reception desk as he leaves, reaching for the phone as soon as he puts his hand on the doorknob.

 _Good fucking riddance to you too_ , he thinks grimly to himself. Shit like this is exactly why he’s getting out of Blackbeech and never looking back. It’s as much a home as every other cold, unfriendly town Sam skipped through during his childhood, places he forgot almost as quickly as they'd forgotten him. He’s not sure what he wants out of life anymore (besides spending as much of it as possible with Dean), but he’s damn well sure it’s not this.

The town office is in an old farmhouse, a little removed from the rest of town (which he’s pretty sure is exactly how Bill likes it), so he walks his way back to Main Street. Dean was in town picking up a few things to work on the car, and they’re supposed to be meeting at the diner for lunch (again, and even Dean is getting a little sick of the food at this point but Sam is powerless under the sad looks Patsy keeps sending his way from the coffee maker).

Only Dean’s not waiting at the diner; he’s leaning against the wall of the hardware store, and Sam would like to think that maybe Dean just decided they could walk the three blocks together, but he can see from the cross of Dean’s arms, the rhythmic tightening of his jaw, that Dean’s pissed about something. Maybe he ran into Reggie? God, Sam hopes not.

Dean’s gaze is somewhere far off to his left, so he doesn’t realize Sam’s approaching until he’s already close. “Everything okay?” Sam asks carefully, and Dean huffs, scuffstomps his boots on the sidewalk as he turns away from Sam and starts walking toward the diner like they’d come to some sort of agreement about it.

“Fine,” Dean says sharply, and Sam resists the urge to quell at the sound of it. He’s not some kicked puppy, no matter how the animal part of him wants to behave.

“Did something happen?” Sam presses, keeping up with the anger-hurried pound of Dean’s pace.

“Nope,” Dean answers, popping the final sound of it off his lips in an obnoxiously exaggerated fashion.

“Dean, hey, come on,” Sam implores, puts a hand on Dean’s arm and Dean whirls to a stop a few feet away from the door to the drug store in his haste to shake it off.

There’s anger in the tightness of Dean’s eyes, and underneath it, hurt, and Sam feels the inescapable plummet of his stomach, a sick sinking feeling he can’t ignore.

He’s hurt his mate.

“Did I—did I do something?” he asks quietly, keeps his hands carefully by his sides.

Dean snorts a cloud of condensation into the winter cold air. “Gotta say something to have done something,” he replies harshly, and Sam can feel his body shrinking in on itself.

He forces himself to stand taller. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he insists, because Dean’s being ridiculous and cryptic and seriously, that statement didn’t even make sense.

Dean looks around like he wants to make sure they’re not being overheard, leans in. “When were you gonna tell me?” It’s starkly accusatory.

“Tell you _what_?” Sam asks, lets all the exasperation he’s feeling and none of the meekness come out in his tone.

“That I’m supposed to—to _turn_ ,” Dean whispers fiercely, and Sam really does go cold all over.

 _Oh god._ “You—you’re not—who told you that?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dean answers, throws his hands out. “ _You_ should have.” He slams a hand into Sam’s shoulder, almost hard enough to make Sam fall a step back. “What the fuck, Sam? I thought we were done lying to each other!”

“I’m not—I didn’t _lie_ to you!” Sam contends. His mind is scrambling. How could Dean have even found out about this? This is—this is the last thing Sam wants his brother to know about, to be thinking about.

“No? So you don’t need me to be a werewolf for me to be your mate? Everything’s just—just hunky dory with you, huh?”

“Dean, no. I don’t, I don’t need you to be anything, okay? Just you. Just you, with me. That’s all. I’m—I’m _happy_ , okay? I didn’t think I’d ever be happy again, but I am. With you, I am.”

“But we can’t mate, can we? Zach said—” _fucking Zach_ , Sam’s mind growls, and God how he’d like to have a few words with his friend before he leaves town, “—that you can only mate with another werewolf, that you’ll spend the rest of your life all—all sad and empty and shit if you don’t. That you might even find—find someone else.” His voice drops off at the end and his hands are stuffed into his pockets, jacket drawn up close around him like a shield, and Sam reaches out, puts his hands on his brother’s face, feels the winter chill that’s sunk into Dean’s skin despite the fighting flush there.

“There will never be anyone else,” Sam says, swears, eyes locked on Dean’s like this is a church instead of a sidewalk, like it’s a vow. “Dean, I can’t—there can’t be. There won’t be. Never. _Never_.” He lets his hands fall away because Dean looks uncomfortable, skittish, and they’re in public. He keeps talking, though. “If you hadn’t come for me, I would have just...been alone. Don’t you get it? I’ve just been waiting for you. Every part of me has been waiting for you. You _are_ my mate. I don’t need you to be a werewolf to know that.”

“But I’m not,” Dean argues. He looks less mad now, more concerned, the same way he’s looked at Sam every time something devastating has happened to him since he was eight and learned that monsters were real. “I’m not your mate, am I? It’s always going to be missing for you.”

“I don’t care about—”

“But I do!” Dean cuts in. “I fucking care, okay?” His hands crawl out of his pockets and land on Sam’s arms, shake him a little. “I can’t—I can’t just walk around knowing you feel like half of you is just _missing_ , Sam! I can’t have that on my conscience.”

“And I can’t have you turning into a monster on mine!” Sam wants to shout, wants to _scream_ because this, this is exactly why he knew he could never bring this up to Dean, never never ever. He can’t force Dean into doing this. It will destroy him. It will _kill_ him, if he doesn’t kill himself first.

“Oh, shut the hell up, Sam!”

It’s so unexpected that Sam just gapes for a minute. “What?”

Dean scoffs, rolls his eyes like Sam is just so unbelievable. “I’m so tired of all the monster bullshit, so just knock it off already. I’ve been around you for months, Sam, and you’re not some monster, okay? I know monsters—you are _not_ one of them.”

“But I’m—”

“You’re Sam,” Dean interrupts firmly. He moves a hand up to Sam’s shoulder, shakes him back and forth to the cadence of his words as he says, “You are just _Sam_.” He lets Sam go, but his eyes are so steady and sincere that it makes Sam’s heart ache. “My pain-in-the-ass, unfairly sexy, hunter-in-training little brother.” Dean’s hand comes to rest over the unsteady lurch of Sam’s heartbeat. “My Sammy,” he finishes, and Sam’s knees want to go weak under his body. It’s not true, none of it, and Sam knows that but right now, that hardly matters. Dean may have a blind spot three miles wide when it comes to Sam, but Dean’s acceptance, Dean’s trust, having Dean say it so plainly—it means everything to him.

“So let it the fuck go,” Dean adds after a minute in which Sam just stares at him with wet eyes and a stupidly open mouth. He thumps Sam twice on the chest, lets his hand fall, and Sam resists the urge to nuzzle himself right under Dean’s chin, breathe in the heat of his skin, the smell of belonging.

“You have to admit that I’m not normal,” Sam says, realizes it sounds almost like a whine.

“Yeah, so you’ve got some enhancements.” Dean shrugs. “Don’t try to tell me you think the nose of a bloodhound and super hearing are some kind of disadvantage.” He laughs at Sam’s raised eyebrows. “What you don’t think I notice you sniffing me all the time?”

“I—um—” Sam stammers, feels himself going pink.

“Nah, I think it’s kinda sweet,” Dean teases, and Sam can’t stop the blush from deepening.

“Shut up,” he replies effectively. He really hates his brother sometimes.

The air is easy between them for a minute, and Sam almost suggests they move on to the diner, but then Dean’s face goes serious again. “You should have told me.”

“I couldn’t,” Sam replies. He knows it’s not an excuse that will satisfy his stubborn ass of brother, but it’s the truth.

“You didn’t,” Dean corrects, and Sam shakes his head.

“I _couldn’t_ ,” Sam emphasizes. “I couldn’t, Dean.”

“Why?” Dean pushes, and Sam can see the tension creeping back into his shoulders, the last thing he wants to happen.

“You won’t understand.”

“Try me.” Dean’s jaw goes flinty, chin tipped up even more than it needs to be to look Sam in the eye.

“Because I had no choice, Dean,” Sam says, small, just as defeated as he feels, as he’s felt every day for the last four years of his life. “Someone did this to me, took my life out of my hands and destroyed it, and I never had a choice. I couldn’t stand—,” his voice hitches without his permission, and he breathes to get himself under control. “I can’t do that to you.”

“So you don’t jump me in the middle of the night with your big, wolfy teeth,” Dean grants with a dismissive brush off of his hand. “You shouldn’t have kept something like this from me. You should have told me the truth.”

“But I know you, Dean.” Sam wishes they were somewhere alone, anywhere that they could be as close as he wants to be, where he could draw Dean into him, make his brother understand. “I know you, and I know exactly what you’re thinking—‘I have to do this for Sam.’ _Have to_. You’ll do this, no matter what I want, no matter what I say, because you think it’s what I need, what’s best for me.” And he can’t stop himself, reaches out again, cups a clumsy, too big paw over Dean’s jaw. “The truth is that I just need _you_ , Dean. As long as you’re with me, it doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters.”

“I—I get it,” Dean allows after a long moment. “I guess. But Sam, it _is_ my choice. This isn’t—I get that it’s not life or death. But it’s still something, something about me that affects you, and I have a right to know when it involves me. You have to tell me what’s going on, all of it, whatever cons you’ve managed to come up with and all the pros you want to pretend don’t exist.” He puts his hand over Sam’s, squeezes tight. “It’s _my_ choice,” he repeats.

Sam wants to argue, but he knows it’s pointless. When Dean gets something like this in his head, he’ll never change his mind. All Sam can hope now is that he can make Dean understand why Sam just can’t let him do this.

He gives Dean a reluctant nod. “Okay, we’ll talk about it.”

“Good,” Dean says. “Now can you stop touching my face, dude? I mean come on, people could be looking at us!” Sam lets his hands drop, but the total lack of sincerity in his brother’s voice makes him feel a little warm inside anyway. “Now for chrissake, let’s get some lunch,” Dean huffs, resettles his jacket with a tug. “I’m starving and it’s fucking freezing out here.” He turns away, muttering about Montana and werewolf body heat under his breath like he hadn’t just admitted he knows how good Sam’s hearing is, and Sam falls into step beside him, enjoys how Dean’s arm brushes against his as they walk in a way that’s definitely not an accident.

“I think I’ve got like three things left to try on the menu,” Dean’s saying as they draw up towards the steps to the diner, “so are we gonna stop by again before we leave, or should I just order all of….” His voice trails off, and Sam looks away from where he’s been watching the expressions changing on Dean’s face. _Fucking great_ , Sam thinks to himself, but bites his lip against the words. Dean says them out loud for him anyway.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Because Reggie is blocking their way to the door, and he does not look inclined to move.


	9. always be

Reggie stands straight, steps forward from where he’s been leaning against the black metal railing that leads up the short cement steps to the diner door, looking entirely too easy for the flat, unimpressed expression on his face. Sam feels his hackles start rising, that animal instinct that Reggie’s presence always seems to draw to the surface. God, he’s so fucking sick of this guy, blames himself a little bit for not putting a stop to it months, years ago, although it’s not exactly like he’s been at all charitable to the guy and he had his personal reasons for not wanting to completely implode any standing he had in the community, so its at least equally Reggie’s fault for never taking the increasingly-forceful hints Sam was giving him. Probably more like eighty-twenty.

“I hear you’re planning on skipping town, Sammy,” Reggie starts, eyes on Sam and doing his usual best to pretend Dean isn’t there at all. Sam feels his brother tensing up beside him, doesn’t need to look to see that Dean’s hands are curling up into fists.

“Yes,” Sam says, short. “We’re leaving.”

The smile Reggie gives him is ugly. “Not even planning to say goodbye?”

Sam steps subtly ahead and slightly in front of Dean. “I’ve made my goodbyes where it matters.”

He sees the anger flash quick across Reggie’s face before it disappears beneath that oil slick smile, more like a baring of teeth now than anything else. “Now, Sam, is that any way to talk to me after everything I’ve done for you?”

Sam’s mouth opens and closes mutely a few times. He can’t help it. He’s possibly never heard anything so absurd in his entire life, and his family hunts monsters. Unfortunately, his silence gives Dean’s oversized mouth a chance to get involved.

“Man, I knew you were delusional, but damn if this isn’t a whole ‘nother level.”

Reggie finally stops looking at Sam, glares hotly at Dean instead, takes a step forward that would probably be menacing to someone who wasn’t as foolhardy as Sam’s brother. “You weren’t even here, _snack pack_ , what do you know? You don’t even _belong_ here, should’ve left town months ago and left well enough alone. Every alpha in this place knows better, knows Sam’s got my claim on him—”

“No, I really don’t,” Sam interrupts, but it goes unnoticed.

Instead Dean takes a step forward, too, and now the two of them are toe-to-toe, almost up in each other’s faces. Dean’s expression is smug, unafraid, aggressive and yeah, that’s not going to help diffuse this situation at all. “If you used those _super_ _werewol_ _f_ _senses_ of yours, Reg, or maybe just your _eyes_ , you’d know he’s already _got_ a claim on him. Has since before you ever even _saw_ him.”

Reggie sneers. “Wow, brothers, huh? Knew you were weird, Sammy, but never pegged you for being a little sick.” He may address it to Sam, but he never takes his eyes, his anger, off Dean. They’re teetering on the edge of a full-on show down, alpha male versus actual alpha bullshit, and Sam’s both worried about his brother and pissed that Dean’s such a goddamn hot head sometimes.

“Rather be sick than pathetic,” Dean sneers right back, and that’s when Reggie puts his hands on Dean’s shoulders and Sam feels forced to intervene.

“Hey!” he says sharply, stepping in and forcing an arm between them. “Back off, Reggie.”

“What’s the matter, Sammy?” Reggie asks, putting a bare half-step of breathing room between himself and Dean but still far too close, far too crowded in, all that nasty attention focused back on Sam, who’s doing his best to wedge his way between Dean’s body and Reggie’s. “Worried your little doggie bag can’t hold his own against a _real_ wolf? A real _man_? What’s he got to offer you, huh? Even if he turns for you, you know he’s not gonna be able to give you want you _need_.” The last is said with such an exaggerated leer that Reggie might as well be grabbing at his dick. It gets Sam’s anger going, too.

“What I _need_ ,” he says hotly, forcing his way completely between Reggie and his brother so that Reggie has to take a full step back to accommodate him, “is someone who treats me like a _person_ , not a hood ornament for his dick.”

Reggie draws himself up. “Well then, I hope you enjoy being big brother’s pretty little _bitch_.”

Sam feels that insult more deeply than he’d like to. Dean doesn’t think that, Sam knows, but it plays on the deep-seated discomfort he’s had since he woke up in this body and never fully been able to shake. That’s not who Sam is, it’s _not_ , and even if it’s a part of him, it doesn’t define him.

He doesn’t let that conflict show though, just laughs coldly. “There’s a reason I’m not the only omega in town who isn’t interested in you, Reggie. Because you’re a rude, chauvinistic son of a bitch. And a dumb one to boot.”

Reggie snarls. “I’m not gonna stand here and let some piss poor omega talk to me like that,” he threatens, and Sam laughs again, right in Reggie’s stupid, bigoted face.

“Yeah,” he fires back, “you are. Because no matter what you like to pretend, no matter what you’ve got between your legs, everyone knows _you’re_ the little bitch here.”

There’s some distant part of Sam’s brain, the rational part that usually maintains control over most of his actions, that’s been trying uselessly to restrain him this whole time, but Sam’s ignored it. He’s just so _sick_ of this place, of the treatment he gets here, of feeling like a _freak_ , and when he’s finally about to escape from it all, Reggie has to drop this shit at his door step. Between him and his brother, Sam may be the calm one, the one who thinks before he acts, but sometimes, a man has just had _enough_.

Still, when Reggie transforms and jumps him, that part of his brain tells him it shouldn’t come as such a surprise. It does though, and Reggie’s big, charcoal-furred body manages to throw him into the dirt before he can react. It knocks the wind out of him, but before Reggie can do much more, Dean’s throwing himself into the fray, shoulder slamming into the region of Reggie’s ribcage hard enough to knock the wolf sideways off of Sam’s body. Dean kicks out with one of his steel-toed boots as Sam sits up, but Reggie manages to dance away, snaps drooling teeth at Dean’s ankle in retaliation and Sam knows he’s got to intervene or one of them is going to end up dead.

Stupid alpha bullshit.

He doesn’t waste any time, just crawls up into a crouch and reaches down into the feral part of his soul that he rarely touches and _tugs_ , pulls at it until it’s sprouting up and out, blanketing him in sensation, consuming his body, his humanity, vision changing and hands quick-melting like wax as they become paws, senses flaring to new heights. The change always feels like it takes ages, stretched out moments that pull like taffy, but in reality mere seconds have passed—Sam’s timed it. As soon as he feels it shudder fully into place, Sam launches himself into the fray.

He knocks his brother away first, ignores the string of curses Dean lets out when Sam’s heavy wolf body, all compact muscle and concentrated aggression, sends him sprawling onto his ass. He turns away, squares off with Reggie immediately. Reggie’s a big wolf, stockier than his human build would suggest, strong, and he lets out a menacing growl that raises Sam’s hackles. But Sam’s bigger, and he’s not just defending himself but Dean too, and so he growls right back, deep and threatening. A warning—back off now or face the consequences.

Sam always did know that Reggie was an idiot.

It should be more dramatic, their battle. The culmination of all the shit Sam’s been putting up with since his first moment in Blackbeech, the unleashing of the anger he’s shoved down as deeply inside of himself as it could go to keep his life here as uncomplicated as possible. But the fact is, Sam’s a hunter, a fighter, years of training his body as a weapon only enhanced by his years as a wolf. And Reggie?

Well, Reggie really _is_ a little bitch.

It’s over almost before it gets started. Sam takes one neat shot with a paw to his face that sends blood spilling warmly over his muzzle, but Reggie gets it much worse, ends up with what Sam guesses are cracked ribs from the force of Sam’s take down. Sam gets his teeth firmly around Reggie’s esophagus, a breath away from snuffing out Reggie’s existence. The alpha wisely acquiesces, goes limp under the weight of Sam’s body with a sad little whimper, and Sam releases him, howls out his victory and laps the blood off his teeth before he suddenly, sickeningly, remembers where he is. Who he’s with.

He takes a few steps away from Reggie’s prone body, shrugs sheepishly back into his human form.

Dean’s on him as soon as he’s straightened up from his crouch, hands curling in Sam’s shirt and dragging him closer for inspection. “Damn,” his brother whistles low, thumbing at the cut on Sam’s eyebrow. Sam feels himself glowing hot under Dean’s scrutiny. He’s mortified, can’t believe he let himself go like that.

“Dude, that was badass,” Dean says, giving Sam one of those irresistible, hundred-watt grins, and Sam offers him a weak smile in return, Dean's earlier words about how he doesn't see Sam as a monster echoing in his head. That smile draws him in, pulls him to Dean like a magnet, a moth to flame. Helpless, hungry.

“Sam!” The voice startles them both, makes Dean drop his hands away from where they’d been pulling Sam in tighter, and they simultaneously turn their heads to the sound. Zach is stumbling up the sidewalk, and Sam realizes with a lurch of his stomach that everyone inside the diner has their faces pressed to the glass, watching everything that’s unfolded down in the street.

“Are you okay?” Zach asks, blustering into Sam’s space like a mother hen, checking him over just like Dean had a moment ago. “I can’t believe Reggie _did_ that!” his friend continues, throwing a dark glare over his shoulder to where Reggie has slunk off, still in his wolf form and hiding in the shadows between two buildings on the other side of the street. He turns back to Sam. “I can’t believe _you_ did that!” he adds, whacking Sam in the upper arm. “That was so _cool_ , Sam! Why didn’t you ever do that before?”

“Um,” Sam says, raises a hand to wipe awkwardly at the blood that’s still oozing from his forehead. “I guess I just...got fed up.” He swallows, gives Zach a thin smile.

“People are gonna be talking about this for _years_ ,” Zach enthuses, finally giving Sam a little breathing room but patting him on the shoulder all the same. “The omega who put an alpha in his place. And I’ll be able to say I knew you when!” Zach shares a beaming grin with Dean, like they’re both so proud. Sam just shakes his head.

“We better get you home,” Dean says, pats Sam’s other shoulder, “get you cleaned up.”

“Okay,” Sam agrees, then adds, “I think we should go.” He means it this time, for real. No more delays. He doesn’t want to wait even one more day to leave this place, to move on. He’s not totally sure where he and Dean are going, but he knows they’re going together and that’s more than enough.

He turns back to Zach, his closest friend during his four years here in Blackbeech, the only other werewolf to really treat him like a friend, like an equal. “Zach,” he starts, “I—.” He’s not sure where to go with it though, but Zach, always more intuitive than Sam, seems to get it. He slips his arms around Sam’s back, pulls him in tight.

“Go be happy, okay?” he whispers into Sam’s ear, gives Sam another smile as he pulls back even though his eyes look a little misty. Then, loud enough for Dean to hear, too: “Let me know when you guys have settled down. I want to come visit!”

“Don’t worry,” Dean says gruffly, and he offers a hand for Zach to shake. “I’m gonna need your help soon enough. We’ll call you.”

Sam catches the words, but they don’t really register because he’s looking at Patsy through the diner’s glass door. He lifts a hand in a wave, and she seems to get it as quickly as Zach did. She raises her coffee pot to him briefly, nods, turns away fast. He thinks about going up the steps, saying goodbye properly, but after four years of knowing her, he thinks she probably prefers it this way.

“Come on,” Dean says quietly, puts an arm around Sam’s back. “Time to go.”

 

{***}

 

Dean’s waiting for it, and sure enough, as soon as they make it back to the house, Sam starts. “What you said to Zach back there….”

“I don’t wanna talk about it, Sam,” Dean answers, heading down the hallway to the little bathroom.

“Hm, that’s nice,” Sam scoffs, following him. He looms in the door frame, bitchface on full display. “Too bad _I do_.”

Dean sighs, running a washcloth under the tap. “Look, I get it, okay? I get your hang ups about this whole thing but, Sam. It’s my body. It’s my life. So it’s my choice.” He wrings out the excess water, draws a pointed line with his gaze from where Sam is standing now over to the toilet.

“It’s not, though,” Sam insists, following Dean’s wordless order into the bathroom and taking a seat. “Not when you’re only doing it because of me.”

Dean snorts, steps up between Sam’s knees. “Are you kidding me? You think I’m just gonna let you run around and be a better hunter than me because you’ve got some secret ninja wolf skills that I only just found out about?” He tilts Sam’s head back with the pressure of a thumb at his jaw, starts dabbing at the blood caked all over the side of Sam’s face. It looks gruesome, but head wounds bleed a lot so he’s not overly worried. “Hell no, dude! I’m totally gettin’ me some of that.” He stops his ministrations, just grins down at Sam as he goes on. “You and me? We’re gonna be the best goddamn hunters the world’s ever seen. We’re gonna be like...like a _pack_.” Sam sighs. He frowns, looks pained, resigned, but Dean thinks he maybe sees hope there, too. “Besides,” Dean goes on, his hands going back to their work, “that whole transforming thing was pretty cool. Don’t let it go to that fluffy head of yours or anything, but you looked pretty badass. All majestic and shit.” He pauses over what he’s doing, contemplative. “Do you think I’d look hot as a wolf?” He looks down at Sam, who’s rolling his eyes and still frowning, but doesn’t bother waiting for a response. “I’d definitely make a hot wolf. All the chick wolves would be all over me.” Sam’s frown deepens, but Dean just keeps looking steadily down at him. “Too bad I’m already taken, hm?” He nudges Sam’s knee with the outside of his thigh.

He can see Sam’s reluctance losing out to a smile, those pretty dimples folding into existence. Since Sam was two years old and holding Dean’s hand to cross the sidewalk, he’s always been able to make Dean feel like a king, but the warmth, the fondness as he looks up at Dean’s face—Dean doesn’t know how to describe what it pulls up in his chest. Something strong and steady, inevitable like rubber meeting asphalt, like the two of them have always been, but reckless and needful on top of it. Dean’s not big on emotions, on cliched words and canned declarations and all that buy-you-flowers, greeting card bullshit, but the love Dean has for his brother is something real, fierce, consuming. Sam makes him feel like an animal already, and Dean’s more than ready to become one for him. For them.

The wound over Sam’s eye is just starting to scab up and there’s still a little blood dried on his skin, but Dean tosses the washcloth into the sink anyway. He puts his damp hand on Sam’s face, feels Sam’s pulse pick up under the thumb he pets down Sam’s throat, leans down and takes Sam’s mouth, already open for him, ready. Sam’s beautiful in that way, so goddamn giving, and Dean doesn’t deserve him, never will, doesn’t care, takes it anyway. He strokes at Sam’s tongue with his own, drags his thumb up to touch at the corner of Sam’s lips, shudders every time a wet slip of tongue sneaks over to tease at it.

He gets his hands in the collar of Sam’s shirt, fists it to drag his brother up and off his seat. They both stumble as the angle of their kiss changes, Dean leaning up and into Sam now instead of down, but they slip back against each other easily, Sam’s broad hands roaming down his back, under his ass, pulling tight enough that he almost takes Dean’s feet off the floor, and Dean loves that about him, that Sam is his omega but he’s all man too, strong and hot under Dean’s hands and Dean wraps a palm around the bulge of Sam’s bicep and fists the other hand in Sam’s hair, lets his brother drag him out of the bathroom, into the bedroom, shoulder-checking Dean into the door frame in a way that’s sure to bruise later.

Dean doesn’t mind.

He spins them once they make it past the threshold, shoves his baby brother down onto the mattress. The bed frame squeals in protest, and Dean laughs as he starts to strip out of his jacket and flannel. “Gonna fuck you on this rickety piece of shit just one more time.” He tugs his undershirt over his head, feels Sam’s amulet bounce and settle back against his chest. “You wanna get undressed for me, sweetheart?”

He likes the way Sam moves to obey him, not hurried but not slow either. Deliberate in the way he pulls off his t-shirt, unbuttons his jeans, stands partway to toe out of his sneakers and shove down his pants and boxers in one clean motion, every inch of bared skin a gift for Dean’s eyes, making Dean’s dick fatten up. Sam keeps his eyes on Dean the whole time, dark and weighted with the willful attention of a predator, and Dean can’t help but preen a little under the heat of it, even as he makes efficient work of his own clothing. By the time Sam’s settling back onto the mattress with only his socks left, Dean’s down to his underwear and moving in. He catches Sam’s hands on their way to divest himself of the socks, pushes Sam’s arms up and overhead instead, leans in to press his brother bodily into the give of the mattress and licks twice over Sam’s pink mouth before he licks his way back inside of it, rough and hungry. He gets lost there for a while, in the wet sounds between them, in the little whimper Sam lets out every time Dean’s teeth dig into the plushness of his bottom lip, the warmsweet taste that makes him ache for Sam’s insides, a need that finally drives him away, mouthing along Sam’s jaw to bite sharply at the hinge, and Dean hisses as Sam’s nails scrape his shoulders in reflexive response. Down the Greek architecture of Sam’s throat, licking up the slide of his collarbone and sniffing at the sweating crease of Sam’s pit before moving down the plane of his chest and over the deceptive softness of his flat belly. Dean gets lost again then, gnawing at the sweetly sensitive crease where Sam’s winged hip meets Sam’s tapered thigh, gets Sam noisy and all but thrashing against the sheets before he finally moves on, admiring the damage he’s left behind, red and purple and the imprints of his teeth on Sam’s secret skin. He hopes it’ll be bruise-yellow for days.

He lifts Sam’s right leg with him as he stands straighter, tonguing his way up Sam’s inner thigh where the hair is thinner, then kissing up his calf when it becomes more coarse. Two fingers under Sam’s sock, down along the delicate bones of Sam’s ankle, and he follows them with his lips as he slips it off, tosses it to the side. Sam shivers, foot jerking like it tickles and he wants to take it away, and when Dean looks up, his brother has flushed pink and irresistible. Dean grins against Sam’s skin, repeats his actions with Sam’s other foot, because it’s not that Dean appreciates Sam’s feet more than any other part of him; it’s just that every part of Sam deserves a little worship.

Finally, Sam’s completely naked, arms stretched overhead, legs spread around Dean’s hips and dangling over the mattress so that his toes touch the floor. Pretty as a picture. He’s so gorgeous, so untouchable. He’s all Dean’s to have, hold.

“Scoot up for me, baby boy,” Dean says, and he’s surprised by the depth of his voice, the purr. Dean’s always known he was smooth, but Sam teases things out of him he never even expected.

Sam seems to appreciate those things, too, gaze only growing hotter as he puts his hands on the mattress, pushes himself up the bed, and seriously, it’s like the werewolf powers include laser vision with the way that look turns Dean’s blood to molten gold. He follows Sam’s path, knees his way onto the mattress, hooks his hands behind Sam’s legs and shoves them up until Sam’s knees are near Sam’s shoulders and Sam’s everything is spread out for him like a goddamn all-you-can-eat buffet.

Dean’s never had very much self control in that regard.

He leans in, takes his time, the anticipation thrumming down in his guts like he knows it must be thrumming in Sam’s. Nips at the skin of Sam’s buttcheeks, spread taut with the strain in Sam’s muscles, noses his way up to the glisten of Sam’s hole, so pink and so fucking enticing, and kisses it softly, gently. Sam gasps above him, and Dean grins, kisses at it again and then again, longer but with no more pressure, a ghost of a touch against Sam’s most sensitive places.

“Dean,” Sam groans out, the fingers Sam’s got gripped around his thighs to hold himself open squeezing tight in Dean’s periphery. Dean feels the blowback of warm air from his chuckle up against Sam’s skin. He kisses again, this time lets the barest hint of his tongue out to touch too, a quick little flick that makes the hole under his gaze clench and wink at him, just enough for a hint of that addictive flavor to spread across Dean’s tastebuds. “Fuck, Dean,” Sam pants, “come on.” It’s not quite please, but it’s close enough, and Dean loves being generous with his boy, swipes his tongue full and wet along Sam’s crack and Sam moans like the waking dead. So responsive.

“So good for me,” Dean sighs, and he feels the little shudder that goes down Sam’s legs at the praise. “Taste so good, too,” he adds, before he puts his mouth to better use.

He could probably do this for hours, if his mouth didn’t get dry and he didn’t lose all the feeling in his lips eventually and he could just ignore the fact that wanting to keep his head buried in another dude’s ass until he drowns is probably a little fucked up. Sam’s so sweet here, that natural flavor intoxicating, and the way he writhes for it, moans for it, Dean’s pretty sure he’d have no problem letting Dean stay down here all day. Unfortunately, Dean doesn’t seem to be able to muster the infinite patience he’d need to tease Sam endlessly, so he focuses on making it good instead, wet laps and swirls of his tongue, one hand flirting with Sam’s taint while the thumb of the other massages close to Sam’s hole, gets it loosened up just enough to let Dean spear his tongue inside, chase more of Sam’s natural slick and the natural high it gives him. Sucks at the opening like the messiest French kiss, puts his teeth on it carefully like the dirtiest one. Pulls back now and then to blow warm or cold air across it, watch it dance with want, with hunger until Dean can’t take it anymore, his dick aching painfully from lack of attention, the wet spot spreading on the front of his boxer briefs making the fabric rub him like a tease. Finally, he pulls away, lips pressure-numbed as he licks the taste of Sam off them again and again. He falls back briefly on his ass to shimmy out of his shorts, then comes back up to his knees.

“You wanna come first?” he asks, cages a hand loosely over Sam’s cock and licks idly around the base. Sam bites his lower lip in indecision, and Dean gives a few more little licks to the head, just to be polite and maybe because he’s fucking desperate for any part of Sam he can get, but then Sam’s saying no, letting go of his grip on his own legs to palm at Dean’s neck and shoulders in a _come up here_ gesture.

Dean follows the command, spreads himself out over Sam’s body, all that skin so warm it’s like laying up against a radiator. His trailing hand fingers at Sam’s hole. “Want me to open you up first?”

“Nah,” Sam breathes under him, legs moving down to cradle Dean's body. “’m ready.” He puts a hand around Dean’s neck, draws Dean in close.

“‘kay,” Dean agrees, easily because he knows what Sam’s body can take by now. He wraps a hand around Sam’s leg, pushes it up and out for easier access, then draws his hand back in to line himself up by feel since Sam seems intent on keeping him close. He slips off the first few tries, then manages to lock it down, force his way into all that unreal, too intense heat, that unbelievable tightness, and he pants the strain of it out against Sam’s lips.

“Fuck,” he grumbles, long and low, and Sam makes a desperate little choking noise as his cock starts to work its way inside, short and steady chops of his hips as Sam’s body gives and unfolds like a flower, until he’s groin-to-ass with his brother and they’re both panting, strained and aching for more.

Being inside of Sam, fucking him, is the kind of poetry even Zeppelin could only dream of achieving.

Dean draws himself out slowly, slides all the way back in, lets himself build up an easy rhythm and watches Sam fall apart underneath him, wetness in those eyes gone jade green and pupil black because Sam crying during sex now is pretty common and not that weird anymore. Dean could never pick a favorite version of his brother, but this one would be heavy competition if he tried. Sam during sex really is supernatural, lets himself go in a way he never, ever does otherwise. It’s a bit like seeing the wolf Dean got to lay eyes on today for the first time, the very animal essence of his brother, the parts of Sam that he’s so afraid of he can only ever show them to Dean.

It awakens something in Dean, too, every time, his corresponding animal, makes him grab Sam rougher, fuck him harder, kiss him like they’re both dying, bite at Sam’s skin like every part of his brother needs to be marked up.

Before he can work himself up too much, Sam’s grabbing at him, stilling him, maneuvering them onto their sides and then growling in frustration as Dean’s cock slips out when Sam swings his body over so that he’s on top. He gets himself reseated smoothly, rolls his hips down easy and experimental and Dean feels pinned, taxidermy butterfly, as that big, gorgeous body towers over him, those broad hands on his chest for balance. He puts his hands on Sam’s hips, plants his feet on the mattress to make a little brace for Sam’s lower back with his thighs, and encourages his little brother as Sam starts to move quicker, more fluid, Dean’s dick sinking in so deep with every roll of Sam’s hips that Dean feels like he’s suffocating.

“God,” Sam moans, “goddamn, Dean, fuck, your cock—,” and he starts fisting his own dick, so Dean puts his back into it, lifts his hips to meet Sam’s every time his brother rolls his way back down, tummy tucked in as tight as Dean can make it so he’s fucking up at the right angle to press against Sam’s prostate every time. Sam’s eager fucking becomes half bouncing, half grinding and Jesus it’s so good, the molten heat and the slippery friction and the squeezing vice of Sam’s body and his brother, over him, too sexy, too beautiful to be real and Dean can’t help it, lets himself go, makes Sam all messy inside with his come and then pulls Sam down _hard_ , snugs his oversensitive cock right up against Sam’s prostate and _rubs_ until Sam shoots all over his hand and Dean’s chest, little drops so hot they feel like acid on his skin until they cool in the air of the room.

Sam rolls off of him and lands heavily on the mattress, and Dean whines a little at the loss, at the cold, before he realizes what he’s doing and cuts off the noise.

Sam’s fingers seek his out across the bed, and they settle palm to sweaty palm, breathe in the after glow for several long, easy minutes.

Eventually, Sam speaks. “Should we pack up the car?” he asks quietly, and Dean turns his head to look at his brother, whose gaze is still on the ceiling.

“You ready?” Dean asks in return.

Sam’s quiet again, but there’s no mistaking the smile that spreads across his features after a moment. “Yeah,” he says, turning to look at Dean now. “I really, really am.” He sits up and then wrinkles his nose. “You should probably clean up first though.”

Dean laughs, something in his chest feeling deep and light and _free_. “Yeah,” he agrees, “probably.”

***

**Six Months Later**

“ _Dean, call me. I have some information I need to share. I know things have been...I know you’ve been out of the hunting business for a while, but I need someone I can trust on this. Call me back, son.”_

Dean flips the phone closed, frowns down at it and rubs a hand over his mouth, stays that way for a long moment.

He startles when the passenger door swings open with a creak, and the smell of Sam hits him, calms him down just that little, before his brother slips into the seat next to him, tosses a bag of beef jerky at his chest that he fails to catch, lets fall into his lap.

“What is it?” Sam asks immediately, and Dean’s not sure if he’s giving off some kind of distress pheromone or his clumsiness is just that telling.

“Dad called,” Dean answers, drags his gaze from the steering wheel in front of him to Sam’s frown.

“What did he want?”

“Wants me to call him back. Said he needs back up on something.”

“Oh,” Sam says carefully. He looks as uneasy as Dean feels, and Dean does the only thing he can think to do right now—turns the key, cranks the engine, gets back onto the highway. Keeps them moving.

“What are you gonna do about it?” Sam asks finally, twenty-five miles down the road, and Dean doesn’t need to look to know his hands are in his lap and picking at his cuticles like he has whenever he was anxious since he was twelve years old.

Dean gives into instinct, reaches over without even glancing to grab one of Sam’s hands in his, laces them together on the bench seat between them.

“We’ll figure it out,” Dean says firmly, and Sam’s thumb drags fondly over his knuckles.

“I like that,” Sam says quietly, and now Dean does look over, catches the tiny half-smile on Sam’s face.

“What?”

“ _We_ ,” Sam answers.

Dean smiles a little too, _damn it_ , and then says, “Wow, I didn’t realize I’d mated myself to a giant vagina.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Sam says, but he sounds amused, and when he punches Dean in the arm, he uses his right hand, leaves the left where it’s tangled up with Dean’s.

“Gotta be careful with that super strength, Samantha,” Dean admonishes.

“I will kill you,” Sam replies, and Dean laughs.

“Nah, you’re stuck with me now,” he says, and Sam grouses, “Yeah yeah,” in a voice that’s so warm even Dean can’t bring himself to tease again.

The blacktop disappears under the roll of Baby’s tires, and Dean ignores that lingering sensation of worry and unease at the back of his mind. Because he and Sam, they’re together now, in every way, inseparable. Even if it’s the two of them against everyone and everything else, they’ll figure it out.

And maybe he’ll put off responding to that phone call just a little bit longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, thanks so much to everyone for your seemingly infinite patience in waiting for the final chapter of this story. I know I am an inconsistent writer and I jump around a lot between projects based on my mood, and then I had just about the busiest first three months of the year that I can imagine, so I very much thank you for waiting to see the end. I hope it was worth it.
> 
> Second, thank you all again, for coming with me on this fun little adventure that started because I decide to smash together this random idea I came up with years ago (like before the Garth is a werewolf episode of the show) about Sam disappearing because he became a werewolf, with a random scene I developed about Dean going to the morgue to look for his missing baby brother, all mixed in with a little bit of my personal love for the interesting (and flexible) world of A/B/O fanfic. I have appreciated, read, and re-read all of your comments and thoughts. They truly mean so much to me. They're like drugs, really, but the good kind that you should keep supplying.
> 
> Third, thank you to all of the people who have cheerleaded (cheerled?) this story along for the last year and half (seriously? I am so slow??). Your support is why I function.
> 
> I do have one eventual and entirely pornographic timestamp planned for this story one day, which will probably provide little in the way of plot but lots in the way of dirtybad sex.
> 
> Please let me know if you have any thoughts or comments or questions! Thank you all again!


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